The Great Auk

On this day in 1844, the last Great Auk, a relative of puffins and razorbills, was killed on an island off the coast of Iceland.

The Great Auk was a flightless bird, measuring between 30 and 33 inches high with wings of only 6 inches in length. It was a member of the Alcid family, with the Razorbill being its closest living relative. Black-backed with a white belly, it developed a white patch over the eye during breeding season. Its bill was around 4 inches long with deep grooves.

At one time, Great Auks were present all over the North Atlantic, ranging from Iceland, Greenland and Norway to New England and northern Spain. They spent most of their time at sea, but came to land during breeding season. They bred on isolated, rocky islands with ledges or reefs, as they could not fly ashore. However, they were amazing swimmers: we know that they were able to dive as deep as 249 feet, and it has been claimed that they were able to dive up to a kilometer deep (3,300 feet).

Humans have hunted the Great Auk for over 100,000 years. With few natural predators, the Auk had no innate fear of people. The birds were hunted for their use as food (as were their eggs, which were almost 5 inches long), but more aggressively for their down, which was used to make pillows. By the mid-16th century, nesting colonies along the European Atlantic coast had almost completely disappeared. In 1553, the Great Auk received its first official protection, and by 1792, it was illegal to hunt them for their feathers in Britain (though they could still be hunted as fishing bait).

As the Great Auk became more and more rare, specimens of the bird and its eggs became prized by wealthy Europeans. Ironically, this drive contributed to the demise of the species. Three men hired by a rich merchant who wanted specimens found the last pair of Auks incubating their egg on the last Great Auk breeding colony, on the Icelandic island of Eldey, on 3 July 1844. Two of them strangled the birds while the third smashed the egg with his boot.

One of the men, Sigurður Ísleifsson, describes the event as follows:
“The rocks were covered with blackbirds [referring to Guillemots] and there were the Geirfugles … They walked slowly. Jón Brandsson crept up with his arms open. The bird that Jón got went into a corner but [mine] was going to the edge of the cliff. [I] caught it close to the edge – a precipice many fathoms deep. The black birds were flying off. I took him by the neck and he flapped his wings. He made no cry. I strangled him.”