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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