The Great Auk was once a common bird
The Great Auk is one of the very few birds that formerly was a common breeding species in Europe but is now globally extinct
The Great Auk is a bird you won't see in the wild. It is extinct globally.
Once numbering in millions, and occurring in Europe as far south as Spain, and in America on the far side of the North Atlantic, the last surviving individuals in the world were a pair of incubating birds on Eldey Island off the coast of Iceland. They were shot at their nest on 3 July 1844 and their single egg was smashed.
A large relation of the Razorbill, Guillemot and Puffin, the black and white seabird stood as tall as a toddler and walked upright. What led to the downfall of the Great Auk was the fact that, like penguins, it was flightless. It was unique in that it was the only flightless species of bird found in the Northern Hemisphere.
The bones of Great Auks have been found in archaeological excavations of kitchen-middens (domestic refuse heaps) in counties Waterford, Clare, Mayo, Donegal, and Antrim, so it is assumed that the birds had thriving breeding colonies in Ireland in the distant past.
Being a seabird, it wasn't very agile on land. People who found a small flock of birds ashore could easily cut off their escape route to the sea and club them to death for their meat to eat, feathers for bedding, skins, and oil for various domestic purposes. All that remains of the species today is 18 specimens in museum collections, and artistic images and historical accounts in books.
The last Great Auk recorded in Ireland was a bird spotted in May 1834 by David Hardy. It was swimming in the sea under the cliffs between Ballymacaw and Brownstown Head near Tramore in Co Waterford. A fisherman named Kirby put to sea, observed that the auk was half-starved, enticed the bird to his boat by throwing Sprats to it, and caught it in his landing net.
The bird, an immature female, was kept in captivity and lived for four months before the unfortunate creature died, the last Great Auk in Ireland. Fortunately, the corpse was given to the museum at Trinity College in Dublin where the remains were cured with arsenical soap, stuffed, and mounted under a glass shade in the museum's collections.
As the image above of the bird on display in the Trinity College museum shows, its lifeless glass eyes still stare out of its protective dome; the last Great Auk recorded in Ireland that died 186 years ago.
