The Great Auk - Part One

The Great Auk

Tonights offering for your acceptance, submitted for your approval, a small, stumpy, short-winged black and white bird that stood two and a half feet tall. Otherwise known as Le Grand Pingouin (Pinguinus impennis) or the great auk.

Denizens of the sea, rocky volcanic islands and coasts of the Northern Hemisphere. Like a penguin, the great auk was so aquatic that while standing on land, it looked regal and ridiculous. Desired both for feathers and food, the great auk also had the misfortune of producing eggs that were a sight to behold.

The eggs were teardrop shaped, the color of aged parchment and measured just under half a foot in length. The shells were adorned in a an ink like scribble which looked like the work of a deranged calligrapher.

In the 16th Century, ships of the fishing fleets would moor at the rocky islands, crews would descend on shore with clubs and drive the unresisting creatures on to the ships where they would be clubbed to death on the ship's decks by the hundreds.

In the 17th Century, Richard Whitbourne, in 1622, praised the Great Auk in his pamphlet A Discourse and Discovery of Newfoundland:

"Auk are as bigge as Geese, and flye not, for they have but a little short wing, and they multiply so infinitely, upon a certain flat Iland, that men drive them from thence upon a board, into their boates by hundreds at a time as if God made the Innocencie of so poor a creature to become such an admirable instrument for the sustenation of man".

More to come in The Great Auk - Part Two

Updated from 04/14/05