THE BIRD BOOK 



Great Auk 

 Dovekie 



33. 



GREAT AUK. Plautus impennis. 



Range. Formerly the whole of the North At- 

 lantic coasts. Now extinct. 



These great auks formerly dwelt in large num- 

 bers on the islands of the North Atlantic, but- 

 owing to their lack of the powers of flight and 

 the destructiveness of mankind, the living bird 

 has disappeared from the face of the earth. 

 Although they were about thirty inches in length, 

 their wings were even smaller than those of the 

 Razor-billed Auk, a bird only eighteen inches in 

 length. Although breeding off the coast of New- 

 foundland, they appeared winters as far south as 

 Virginia, performing their migration by swim- 

 ming alone. The last bird appears to have been 

 taken in 1844, and Funk Island, off the coast of 

 Newfoundland, marks the place of their disap- 

 pearance from our shores. There are about sev- 

 enty known specimens of the bird preserved, and 

 about the same number of eggs. The immediate 

 cause of the extinction of these birds was their 

 destruction for food by fishermen and immigrants, 

 and later for the use of their feathers commercial- 

 ly. The single egg that they laid was about 5.00 x 3 

 inches, the ground color was buffy white, and the shpots brownish and black- 

 ish. The markings varied in endless pattern as do those of the smaller Auk. 

 There are but two real eggs (plaster casts in imitation of the Auks eggs are 

 to be found in many collections) in collections in this country, one in the 

 Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia, and the other in the National 

 Museum, at Washington. Through the kindness of Mr. Witmer Stone, of the 

 Academy of Natural Science, we are enabled to sohw a full-sized reproduction 

 from a photograph of the egg in their collection. 



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