William Woolfitt
Auk
A diver with 3 toes, webbed feet, short wings and tail. Deprived of flight by the smallness of its wings. Dark-brown above, white below, with a large white spot before the eye. The last flightless seabird native to the northern hemisphere.
Beothuk
Indigenous people hunted the great auks off the coast of Newfoundland, dried their egg-yolks for puddings, stuffed egg and liver into seal guts to make sausage. They last visited Funk Island in 1792; white fishermen wanted the auks for themselves, shot at the Beothuk in their canoes, perhaps wounded or killed them.
Childhood of Frederic Lucas
At nine, he sailed to Japan with his father, tried to skin a gull in the carpenter’s shop. Maybe he counted fairy terns, flying fish. Maybe he caught a dorado, saw it turn rainbow colors as it died on the deck.
Dealer
Everyone wanted auk-eggs and auk-skins. Every museum, every auction house. Siemsen sold natural history wares. He heard that a few auks still survived in the Fuglasker (Fowl Skerries), sent some sailors to find out.
Eldey
Guðmundsson discovered fifty auks nesting on Eldey (Fire Island, or the Meal-Sack)—a sheer-sided chunk of basalt ten miles from Iceland. He got twelve auks, came back for more. He may have climbed up to the auks by hammering pegs into the sides of Eldey.
Funk Island
The largest breeding ground of great auks, a wind-scoured granite slab. Everywhere, the cacophony of auks, razorbills, terns—their rough shrieks, a continuous squabble. Everywhere, the reek of dead fish, of bird excrement, tons of it. The Beothuk could find the island even on days of heavy fog.
Gare-fowl
The colonists of Newfoundland called the auk gare-fowl, anglicizing the Icelandic name geir-fugl, spear-bird. For a time, the auks were safe on Geir-fugl-asker, a tiny island whose steep cliffs no man could scale.
Human
The colonists used auk meat for winter food, its feathers for mattresses, its fat for lamp oil, its collarbones for fish-hooks. Errol Fuller: The auks were exploited in every way human ingenuity could devise.
Inform
The mother lode of scientific information about Funk came from Lucas. He visited there in 1887, mapped it, brought back thousands of auk bones.
July 3, 1844
Extinction day. The sailors sent by Siemsen climbed Eldey, saw the last two, chased them. The auks ran along under the cliff, uttered no cry, and moved, with short steps, about as quickly as a man. Jón with outstretched arms drove one into a corner. Sigurður and Ketill pursued the second, and seized it close to the rock-edge. The birds were strangled and cast into the boat. Jón hesitated before getting in.
Kettle
On Funk, the feather-hunters ripped feathers from auks, bled them to death. Clubbed them and drove them into stone corrals. Kettled them to scald off the feathers. Used their oil-rich carcasses to fuel the kettle-fires.
John Guy: The Beothuk had great lockes of haire platted with feathers.
Lucas’s Tools
He brought barrels, clam-hoes, soap, labels, and gauze. He ran the hoe-edge over the earth, loosening bits, skimming the guano and ash.
Murder
Lucas: the auk was hunted with the murderous instincts and disregard for the morrow so characteristic of the white race.
Nest
Auks nested in dense colonies, laying one egg per season on bare rock. The eggers of Labrador tramped the nesting grounds, crushed all the eggs beneath their heels, then returned a week later to gather whatever eggs were freshly laid.
Open Sea
Because polar bears frequented the coast of western Greenland, great auks did not nest there, and so the Inuit hunted them with darts while kayaking at sea. Isarukitsoq, they called the auks, stump-winged. Kiviak, they called the food they obtained by cramming whole auks into sealskins, burying the skins under rocks until the meat fermented.
Provide
Lucas: So long as the species existed, colonists availed themselves. In the manner of mankind, they assumed Providence had provided auks for their special benefit.
Queen and King
Papa Westray, Scotland: The Queen and King of the Auks were frequenting the bays. The Queen was killed with a stone while sitting on her egg. The King was unsuccessful in procuring another mate. The zeal of the islanders being roused, the King was at length killed.
Resurrect
Lucas: The puffins play the part of resurrectionists, and the entrance to each puffin-burrow is ornamented by a little heap of whitening auk bones.
Stuff
Sigrida Thorlaksdotter prepared twenty-four auks taken from Eldey, opening them under the right wing, and stuffing the skins with fine hay. Perhaps she might be thought of as another salvage artist—like Lucas, like the puffins he saw on Funk Island.
Translate
Lucas: There was some chance of the Auk receiving from Spanish fishermen its original name (penguin, from the Spanish pingue, fat), although the English speaking race has ever forced its language upon all with whom it comes in contact.
Cartier called them apponatz, a name he learned from the Beothuk.
Up the Coast
Lucas sailed up Newfoundland, past the Magdalens, past Grindstone Island. He saw only one mammal, a puny seal. He writes, this region once had a flourishing walrus fishery; thousands were taken annually. The goodly fir-trees have become scrubby spruce, the cods few, the herring industry unimportant.
Volcano
A volcano destroyed Geir-fugl-asker, one of the last auk homes. The survivors retreated to Eldey.
Want
John Cartwright: During the egg season, the Beothuk feed luxuriously; they drive auks from shore into their boats; in archery they have an unerring hand that supplies their wants.
Execute
St. Kilda, Scotland: three men captured an auk on a seastack, tied it up for three days, and when a storm came, they beat it with sticks. They thought it was a witch.
Y dos Aves
1503: Funk was called Y dos Aves, isle of birds, on a map made by Pedro Reinel. The sacred island over the horizon, the Beothuk called it.
Zero
In museums, seventy-five eggs remain—yellow-white, marbled, zero-shaped.