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Updated: June 13, 2025
Their extermination was the result of man's reckless slaughter of them when the Newfoundland banks became the resort of the world's fishermen. Not only was the great auk slain in vast numbers, for the sake of fresh food, but it was salted by tons for future use and sale.
CONNECTICUT: Passenger pigeon, Eskimo curlew, great auk, Labrador duck, upland plover, heath hen, wild turkey; puma, gray wolf, Canada lynx, black bear, elk. DELAWARE: Wild turkey, ruffed grouse, passenger pigeon, heath hen, dickcissel, whooping crane, Carolina parrakeet; white-tailed deer, black bear, gray wolf, beaver, Canada lynx, puma.
I tried to realize that I was gazing upon the last individuals of an all but extinct race the sole survivors of the gigantic auk, which, for thirty years, has been accounted an extinct creature. I believe that I did not move muscle nor limb until the sun had gone down and the crowding darkness blurred my straining eyes and blotted the great, silent, bright-eyed birds from sight.
I drew the letter from my pocket and read as he directed: "When you have seen the two living specimens of the great auk, and have satisfied yourself that I tell the truth, you may be wise enough to listen without prejudice to a statement I shall make concerning the existence of the strangest creature ever fashioned.
Like the old poets, he does not dwell upon nature, except occasionally through the vistas opened up by the great sciences, as astronomy and geology, but upon life and movement and personality, and puts in a shred of natural history here and there, the "twittering redstart," the spotted hawk swooping by, the oscillating sea-gulls, the yellow-crowned heron, the razor-billed auk, the lone wood duck, the migrating geese, the sharp-hoofed moose, the mockingbird "the thrush, the hermit," etc., to help locate and define his position.
It don't stand to reason; for now and then somebody gets a great auk egg. If you find 'em they've got to be laid; and if they're laid there's got to be hen great auks somewhere. Now the p'int is to find out where them great auks lay. It may be a awful job to do it, but if I can do it, and get just two eggs, my fortune's made, and yourn too.
He saw no glaciers that discharged bergs into the sea at Cook Inlet, but many in Prince William Sound. June 22. Leaving Juneau at noon, we had a good view of the Auk Glacier at the mouth of the channel between Douglas Island and the mainland, and of Eagle Glacier a few miles north of the Auk on the east side of Lynn Canal.
"I guess you're going to look at those birds of his," continued Lee, placidly. "I guess I am," I said, sulkily, glancing askance to see whether he was smiling. But he only asked me, quite seriously, whether a great auk was really a very rare bird; and I told him that the last one ever seen had been found dead off Labrador in January, 1870.
But I had nothing more to say, for the prospect of beholding with my own eyes a living specimen of the great auk produced a series of conflicting emotions within me which rendered speech profanely superfluous. As I took my leave Professor Farrago came to the door of the temporary, wooden office and handed me the letter written by the man Halyard.
Petrels are the most aerial and oceanic of birds, yet in the quiet Sounds of Tierra del Fuego, the Puffinuria berardi, in its general habits, in its astonishing power of diving, its manner of swimming, and of flying when unwillingly it takes flight, would be mistaken by any one for an auk or grebe; nevertheless, it is essentially a petrel, but with many parts of its organisation profoundly modified.
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