CHAPTER XV 



THE BIRDS 



BY CHARLES WENDELL TOWNSEND, M.D. 



FROM an ornithological point of view, Labrador has an 

 interesting past as well as present. The great Audubon 

 testified to the wonderful interest of Labrador to the orni- 

 thologist, by visiting this country in 1833. His writings 

 contain frequent reference to the observations he made 

 at that time, and he states in his Labrador Journal that he 

 executed or partly executed seventeen plates of birds during 

 his brief sojourn of two months on these shores. 



Since Audubon' s times there have been sad changes in 

 the bird life of this country. Two species have become 

 extinct; namely, the great auk and the Labrador, or pied, 

 duck. The former bred in great numbers on Funk Island 

 off the near-by coast of Newfoundland, but was slaughtered 

 mercilessly during the latter part of the eighteenth and the 

 beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Cartwright de- 

 scribes the capture of one of these flightless birds, not far 

 from the southern coast of Labrador. He says, calling 

 the bird by its common name of " penguin": "We were 

 about four leagues from Groais Island at sunset [Mon- 

 day, August 5, 1771] when he saw a snow [sailing-vessel] 

 standing in for Croque. During a calm in the afternoon, 

 Shuglawina went off in his kyack in pursuit of a penguin; 



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