The Great Auk: The Original Penguin and Britain's Last One

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The St Kilda killing was recorded decades later from the testimony of men involved, and details vary. The last Orkney birds, killed in 1812–13, are also sometimes described as Britain's last. Unconfirmed sightings continued into the 1850s. Most sources treat 1844 as the end, but Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey, in Birds Britannica (2005), state that 1852 is "now accepted as the date marking the bird's extinction"; this article gives both.

The archaeological evidence, the Papa Westray and St Kilda details and the date of the Eldey killing are checked against the account by Errol Fuller, Chris McInerny and Bernie Zonfrillo in the Scottish Ornithologists' Club's The Birds of Scotland (2007). Following Alfred Newton (1861), that account dates the Eldey killing to a day between 2 and 5 June 1844, probably 3 June. The 3 July date found in many popular accounts is not supported there.

A northern penguin

established The great auk was a big, flightless relative of the razorbill and puffin, standing up to about 85 centimetres tall, with a black back, white front and a white patch in front of each eye. Its small wings were useless in the air but powerful underwater, where it chased fish. On land it was slow and clumsy, which made it easy prey. It bred in dense colonies on a few remote islands across the North Atlantic.

established Sailors called it the penguin, a name whose origin is uncertain. When European explorers reached the southern oceans and saw similar black-and-white flightless birds, they called them penguins too. The two groups are not related; their likeness is a case of convergent evolution.

Slaughter

established People hunted great auks for at least 100,000 years, but the killing became industrial after Europeans reached North America. In 1534 Jacques Cartier's crews filled two boats with dead birds in half an hour on Funk Island, off Newfoundland. Fishermen salted them for food, used them as bait and boiled them for oil, and in the eighteenth century feather hunters stripped the colonies. By the early nineteenth century only a few small populations remained.

established As the bird became rare, museums and collectors wanted specimens and eggs, which accelerated the end.

The St Kilda auk, 1840

established In 1840 a group of St Kildans, among them Laughlan McKinnon and Malcolm MacDonald, were fowling on Stac an Armin, a sea stack 196 metres high and the tallest in Britain. They saw an unfamiliar flightless bird, caught it and took it alive. A storm then trapped them on the stack for days. Convinced the strange bird was a witch, or that it had brought the storm, they killed it, by some accounts stoning or beating it to death.

established Historians regard it as almost certainly the last great auk ever seen in Britain; The Birds of Scotland (2007) calls it "probably the last Great Auk recorded alive in the British Isles", dated to around 1840, and notes it may only have been sheltering from bad weather. It was not, however, the first on St Kilda. Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey, in Birds Britannica (2005), say that the bird once bred there in good numbers and that in Martin Martin's day, the 1690s, the islanders still took it.

shared The SOC account is more cautious. It is not certain the great auk ever bred regularly on St Kilda, and it was gone by the middle of the eighteenth century; later birds may have been passage visitors from further north. The book's chapter on the history of Scottish ornithology, citing W. R. P. Bourne (1993), suggests the birds Martin reported may have been mainly immature non-breeders from further north. In 1821 one was caught at St Kilda and taken towards the mainland tied by a cord to one leg. It escaped in the Firth of Clyde off Pladda and was presumably the bird later found dead on the shore at Gourock. They prized its eggs, about 5 inches (12.4 cm) long and described by one early account as "as big almost as those of the Ostrich". They also stuffed an auk's stomach with its own fat, cured it in the smoke of the chimney and used it as medicine. By 1840 a living great auk was so rare that the fowlers on Stac an Armin did not recognise it.

Papa Westray: the King and Queen o' the Aaks

established Great auk bones and records come from Orkney, Caithness and both the Inner and Outer Hebrides, and until the late medieval period the bird was probably a regular visitor to British shores. The last known British pair lived on Papa Westray in Orkney, where the islanders called them the "King and Queen o' the Aaks". Birds Britannica records that the female was stoned to death on her nest in 1812 and the male was killed the following year.

shared The Birds of Scotland (2007) says only that the female was killed "apparently while incubating an egg", and doubts that the pair's resting place, the Fowl Craig, was a regular nest site, since it is awash in easterly winds even in summer; the nearby Holm of Papa looks more suitable. In May 1813 Bullock chased the male for several hours in a six-oared boat without success. Islanders took it soon after he left, by one account hitting it with an oar, by another shooting it. Its mounted skin, first shown in Bullock's London museum, is now in the Natural History Museum's bird collection at Tring.

established Money drove the second killing. The collector William Bullock had offered enough to make the hunt worthwhile, and he later sold the male bird for £16 5s 6d. Collecting, not superstition, finished the species: in 1832 a single egg changed hands for £15 15s 6d at a time when a skilled worker earned about £9 10s a year. By 1895 an egg fetched £350. The London auction house Stevens' of Covent Garden became so tied to the trade that its telegraphic address was simply "Auks, London".

established In 1988, 175 years after Bullock's bird was killed, junior members of the Orkney Field Club built a cairn and monument at Fowl Craig, in the RSPB's North Hill reserve on Papa Westray. A potter made a half-size model of the bird, a time capsule was set in the cairn, and every child received an enamel great auk badge.

Bones in the middens

established The account by Errol Fuller, Chris McInerny and Bernie Zonfrillo in The Birds of Scotland (2007) reconstructs the Scottish story from archaeology. Bones have been found in Shetland, Orkney, the Outer Hebrides, Oronsay, Sutherland, Caithness, the Isle of May, Lothian and Ailsa Craig, and the bird is likely to have bred widely on the islands of the north and west. Orkney has the richest record, from the Neolithic to medieval times, mostly in kitchen middens, with knife cut marks showing the birds were eaten. Juvenile bones there suggest breeding, although no historical record of an Orkney colony exists.

established The middens also chart a decline. At the Knap of Howar and Tofts Ness great auks made up 14% of bird bones in the Neolithic, 3,500–3,100 BC, but only 1% at Buckquoy in the late Iron Age, and very few were taken in Norse and medieval times. Shetland shows the same pattern: great auk bones are among the commonest finds in Iron Age levels at Sumburgh but are rare by the late Iron Age and apparently absent by the Norse period. Bones from Jarlshof are larger than those elsewhere, raising the possibility of separate populations. The book's archaeology chapter suggests that as accessible colonies were wiped out, islanders switched to gannets.

shared Hunting is the main cause of extinction, but the SOC account notes a suggestion that the Little Ice Age, which may have iced over breeding areas, also played a part.

The garefowl

established In Britain the bird's traditional name was garefowl, from the Old Norse geirfugl, "spear-bird", after its heavy, blade-like bill. It stood about 30 inches (76 cm) tall and weighed about five times as much as a common guillemot.

Eldey, June 1844

established The last regular European colony was on the Geirfuglasker, a rock off south-west Iceland that sank during volcanic activity in 1830. A few pairs moved to nearby Eldey, where they were hunted until 1844. shared On a day between 2 and 5 June 1844, probably 3 June according to Alfred Newton's inquiry, fishermen landed there, caught the last pair, which were incubating an egg, and strangled them. One of the men crushed the egg under his boot. The skins were sold to a collector. Rumoured sightings continued into the 1850s, but none was confirmed.

Legacy

shared About 78 great auk skins and 75 eggs survive in museums around the world. Counts vary slightly by source and date: Birds Britannica gives about 70 eggs known at the end of the nineteenth century, five more found by a 1960s survey, and 81 skins, while The Birds of Scotland (2007) gives around 80 specimens and 75 eggs. None of the eggs is of Scottish origin. The great auk became one of the first species whose extinction at human hands was widely recognised, and it helped inspire early bird protection laws.

• The great auk was the original "penguin".
• It was flightless but an excellent underwater swimmer.
• Britain's last great auk was killed on St Kilda because its captors thought it was a witch.
• The last breeding pair was killed in Iceland in June 1844.
• In Neolithic Orkney about one bird bone in seven from the middens at the Knap of Howar and Tofts Ness was a great auk's.
• The only great auk specimen of certain Scottish origin is the Papa Westray male of 1813, now at Tring.
• In 1821 a great auk was led towards the mainland from St Kilda on a string tied to its leg, and escaped in the Firth of Clyde.
• Its closest living relative is the razorbill.
• Orkney islanders called the last British breeding pair, on Papa Westray, the "King and Queen o' the Aaks".
• St Kildans used a great auk's stomach, stuffed with its own fat and smoke-cured, as medicine.
• A London auction house sold so many great auk relics that its telegraphic address was "Auks, London".
• A cairn built by Orkney children in 1988 commemorates the bird on Papa Westray.

• Myth: The great auk was a penguin. It was an auk, a relative of the razorbill. Sailors called it the "penguin" first, and the name was later given to the unrelated southern birds because they looked like it.
• Disputed: How the St Kilda bird died. The killing was recorded decades later from the testimony of men involved, and details vary. By some accounts the bird was stoned or beaten to death.
• Myth: The St Kilda bird of 1840 was the last great auk. It was almost certainly the last seen in Britain, but the last known breeding pair was killed on Eldey, Iceland, in 1844.
• Myth: The 1840 bird was the first great auk recorded on St Kilda. Martin Martin described the species there in the 1690s, when the islanders still took the bird and its eggs. The Scottish Ornithologists' Club account is more cautious about whether it ever bred there regularly.
• Disputed: When the species became extinct. Most accounts give 1844. Birds Britannica (2005) says 1852, the date of a later accepted sighting, is now taken as the end.
• Disputed: The date of the Eldey killing. Following Alfred Newton, The Birds of Scotland gives a day between 2 and 5 June 1844, probably 3 June. The 3 July date found in some popular accounts is not supported there.
• Disputed: That Papa Westray was a breeding colony. The 1812-13 pair rested on the Fowl Craig, which the Scottish Ornithologists' Club account thinks unlikely as a regular nest site. The nearby Holm of Papa looks more suitable.