similar-colored flightless birds in the Southern Hemisphere, they used the
same name, which led to much confusion, since auks and penguins belong
to entirely different families. (Penguins constitute their own family, while
auks are members of the family that includes puffins and guillemots;
genetic analysis has shown that razorbills are the great auk’s closest
living relatives.)
Like penguins, great auks were fantastic swimmers—eyewitness
accounts attest to the birds’ “astonishing velocity” in the water—and they
spent most of their lives at sea. But during breeding season, in May and
June, they waddled ashore in huge numbers, and here lay their
vulnerability. Native Americans clearly hunted the great auk—one ancient
grave in Canada was found to contain more than a hundred great auk
beaks—as did paleolithic Europeans: great auk bones have been found at
archaeological sites in, among other places, Denmark, Sweden, Spain,
Italy, and Gibraltar. By the time the first settlers got to Iceland, many of
its breeding sites had already been plundered and its range was probably
much reduced. Then came the wholesale slaughter.
Lured by the rich cod fishery, Europeans began making regular
voyages to Newfoundland in the early sixteenth century. Along the way,
they encountered a slab of pinkish granite about fifty acres in area, which
rose just above the waves. In the spring, the slab was covered with birds,
standing, in a manner of speaking, shoulder to shoulder. Many of these
were gannets and guillemots; the rest were great auks. The slab, about
forty miles off Newfoundland’s northeast coast, became known as the Isle
of Birds or, in some accounts, Penguin Island; today it is known as Funk
Island. Toward the end of a long transatlantic journey, when provisions
were running low, fresh meat was prized, and the ease with which auks
could be picked off the slab was soon noted. In an account from 1534, the
French explorer Jacques Cartier wrote that some of the Isle of Birds’
inhabitants were “as large as geese.”
They are always in the water, not being able to fly in the air, inasmuch as they have only
small wings ... with which ... they move as quickly along the water as the other birds fly
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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