Auks are a common group of marine birds comprising 22 species, and include guillemots and puffins. When submerged, they propel themselves with their wings, steering with the feet. The legs are near the tail, giving the birds an upright posture on land, like that of a penguin. Living auks weigh from 90 grams to 1 kg. The Great Auk weighed 5 kg. Auks apparently originated near the Bering Sea, and presently occur in the North Pacific, North Atlantic, and Arctic Oceans. The Great Auk inhabited temperate and subarctic waters (Northern Britain, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland), moving further south in winter. Except during the breeding season, auks live in the open sea. The diet of auks consists principally of fish, but also includes many other types of marine organisms. Most auk species breed in large colonies, choosing coastal cliff ledges, crevices, and burrows for their nests. Males and females share the task of incubating the one or two eggs, a process which requires four to six weeks. Depending on the species, the chicks remain in the nest for a period of two to fifty days.
The Great Auk is an extinct flightless bird that has become a symbol of destruction of the Earth and its life forms. The last authenticated sighting of this species was from Fire Island off the coast of Cape Reykjanes, Iceland, on June 3, 1844. At that time a pair of adult Great Auks were caught and killed by fishermen. The adults had laid an egg and were incubating. That was probably the last egg ever laid of this species. Great Auk specimens soon came to rest in major taxidermy collections and museums in Europe and North America. This was largely due to bequests of private taxidermy collections, integration of collections into one facility and purchases of collections from estates. it is a pityful testimony that, by comparison, only a handful of eggs and mounted specimens remain of a species, like the Passenger Pigeon, that once had significant numbers.
The Great Auk was the original 'Penguin'. When explorers discovered the 'Penguins' of the Southern Hemisphere, the name was transferred to the birds that appeared to be like the Great Auk and were found in the Southern Hemisphere. Penguin or Pin-wing or Pinquin or Pingwin - 'the fat one', attributed to Spanish and Portugese voyagers; 'Penguin', the name of a flightless sea bird, but so far as is known was first given, as in Hore's 'Voyage to Cape Breton', 1536.
In the 17th and early 18th centuries the Great auk had sufficient numbers to be used as a navigational tool for sailors on the Grand Banks. However, it may have had a limited distribution because of the scarcity of low-lying islands which were used as breeding grounds. One estimate puts Great Auk breeding pairs at 100,000 in just that specific area. By the late 1600s the Auk population was dramatically declining owing to commercial exploitation for feathers oil and meat.
Breeding colonies were heavily exploited for meat, feathers, eggs and young. Crews on fishing ships would go ashore with clubs and drive the unresisting great auks onto the ships where they were clubbed to death on the ship's decks by the hundreds. At other times the birds were driven into the holds and used as a fresh food supply on long voyages. One fishing boat captain took 100,000 eggs in one day. The young were used as fish bait. After the collapse of eider duck populations due to habitat destruction and down harvesting, feather merchants turned to the great auk colonies, which further depleted their population. An entry in a ship's log in 1794 states: 'If you come for their feathers you do not give yourself the trouble of killing them, but lay hold of one and pluck the breast of his feathers; you turn the poor penguin adrift to perish at his leisure...' '...you are in the constant practice of horrid cruelties, for you not only skin them alive, but you also burn them alive to cook their own bodies with.' Great auks once bred in Ireland, but by the 19th century the colonies were restricted to a few sub-arctic islands.. No more to say or add really, having read this. None survive today.
It is undersootd that 81 mounted preserved skins (two are pictured above), 24 complete preserved skeletons, two collections of viscera and 75 eggs (one is pictured above) are all that are left of the millions of great auks that once roamed the North Atlantic.
