The Spanish sailors of the 1500s used Bermuda and its surrounding islands as a waypoint to the Americas. At that time, cahows were abundant and formed dense, noisy colonies. These sailors, as Diego Ramirez writes in 1603, would take up to 400 birds a night for food. In addition to eating birds, conquistadors brought hogs to the island to sustain themselves over their voyage. These hogs decimated the ground-nesting cahow, rooting up their burrows, eating eggs, chicks and adults and disrupting their breeding cycle.