ANATOMY OF BIRDS
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
MIGRATIONS OF BIRDS
CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS
LIZARD-TAILED BIRD
AMERICAN TOOTHED-BIRDS
THE OSTRICHES
THE RHEAS
EMEUS AND CASSOWARIES
THE TINAMOUS
THE KIWIS
THE PENGUINS
LOONS AND GREBES
ALBATROSSES & PETRELS
STORK-LIKE BIRDS
GOOSE-LIKE BIRDS
FALCON-LIKE BIRDS
FOWL-LIKE BIRDS
CRANE-LIKE BIRDS
PLOVER-LIKE BIRDS
CUCKOO-LIKE BIRDS
THE ROLLER-LIKE BIRDS
SPARROW-LIKE BIRDS
Birds and Birding's Guide to:
Watching THE PLOVER-LIKE BIRDS
THE GULLS AND THEIR ALLIES
The Great Auk
The Great Auk appears to have bred at one time in great numbers on St. Kilda, various islands and skerries of the Hebrides, as well as at Orkney and Shetland, and was rarely met with along the shores of Norway and Sweden.
In prehistoric times it frequented the fjords of Denmark, as its remains have been found in the Danish kitchenmiddens, but its last stand on the European side was made on several small rocky islands near Iceland, from which the last pair was taken, as above stated, in the summer of 1844.
Funk Island, off the Newfoundland coast, appears to have been the last home of this bird in America. Here they were found nesting in great numbers when the island was first visited about 1534, and during the succeeding period of three centuries they were subjected to continual persecution and eventually disappeared at about the same time as on the other side of the Atlantic.
As they were helpless on land they were easily killed by the fishermen and hunters, who visited the island for the purpose, and it is of record that they were driven aboard vessels in hundreds across sails or planks stretched from the gunwales to the shore.
Their eggs were also taken for table use, but it was not apparently until some one thought of killing them for their feathers that they were really doomed. Mr. Lucas, who visited Funk Island in 1887, found indications of the stone pens in which the birds were confined before slaughter, as well as heaps of bones where their bodies had evidently been thrown after being plucked.
Probably within a comparatively few years after this form of persecution was begun the last were driven from the island, and being unable to establish themselves in another suitable location, were pushed to the wall. All that remains to-day of the Great Auk are about seventy skins, sixty-five eggs, and some twenty-five more or less perfect but composite skeletons, that is, skeletons made up from the bones of many different individuals.
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