Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE PLOVER-LIKE BIRDS

THE GULLS AND THEIR ALLIES

Great Auk, Garefowl.

Of these the Great Auk, or Garefowl (Plautus impennis)-, was in very many respects the most interesting, its sad and untimely fate having invested it with a pathetic not to say melancholy history. It was not only the largest of the family, attaining a length of from twenty-eight to thirty inches, but was the only North American bird incapable of flight, its wings being so much reduced as to be incapable of sustaining it in the air, although made use of in propelling it through the water.

In coloration of plumage it was uniform black above and pure white beneath, with a broad patch of white on the wings, while in summer the chin, throat, neck, and sides of the head became velvety dark brown, and a large oval patch of white appeared between the bill and eyes. The home of the Great Auk was the North Atlantic south of the Arctic Circle, ranging on the American side from Labrador to Virginia, or perhaps exceptionally as far as Florida, where bones have recently been found in aboriginal shell heaps, and on the European side from Iceland to the Bay of Biscay.

The last one appears to have been killed on the American side in 1842, and on the European side about 1844. The following account was written by Thomas Nuttall, one of America's pioneer ornithologists, long before their extermination: “

Deprived of the use of wings, degraded as it were from the feathered ranks, and almost numbered among the amphibious monsters of the deep, the Auk seems condemned to dwell alone in the desolate and forsaken regions of the earth; yet aided by all-bountiful nature, it finds means to subsist, and triumphs over all the physical ills of its condition.

As a diver it remains unrivaled, proceeding beneath the water, its most natural element, almost with the velocity of many birds through the air. It thus contrived to vary its situation with the season, migrating for short distances, like the finny prey upon which it feeds. In the Faroe Isles, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland these birds dwell and breed in great numbers.

They nest among the steepest cliffs of islands, remote from the shore, taking possession of caverns and clefts of rocks; or they dig for themselves deep burrows in which they lay their only egg, about the size of that of the Swan, whitish yellow, marked with numerous lines and spots of black which present to the imagination the idea of Chinese characters. They are so unprolific that if their egg be taken away, they lay no other that season."

 

 

 

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