We cannot, however, quite agree with Clark (1948), who has collected the information about these deposits, that it was certainly wider, for it seems to us likely (see here) that the young great auk left its breeding skerry very early, perhaps, like the razorbill, without either primary or secondary wing-feathers, not much more than a fortnight after hatching; and probably swam with its parents many hundreds of miles before ‘fledging.’ Clark’s list shows great auk bones in middens of the Middle Stone Age in France, Denmark, West Sweden and Norway, of the New Stone Age in France, Denmark and Norway, of the Iron Age in west Sweden and Norway. Several brochs (small forts) in Orkney and Caithness inhabited by the Picts also contained great auk bones; this practically brings the great auk to historical times.
FIG. 12
Upper Palaeolithic (probably Magdalenian) rock-engraving at El Pendo, near Santander, North Spain, showing what are probably great auks of which modern sketch on left. (After H. Breuil, 1911; G. Clark, 1948)
We suspect that the prehistoric exploitation of the great auk was largely confined to interception of the birds on passage and in their winter quarters;* the final collapse and extinction of the species took place only when Man in modern ships reached and attacked its main breeding-haunts.
These, as far as can be discovered, were the certain breeding-colonies of the great auk:
In Britain, St. Kilda and Papa Westray
In Iceland, Geirfuglasker and Eldey, S.W. of Cape Reykjanes and Geirfuglasker in the Westmann Islands
In the Magdalen Islands (Gulf of St. Lawrence), Bird Rocks
In Newfoundland, Funk Island (east)
Other stations at which it possibly nested, but about which the evidence is not entirely satisfactory, are:
In Britain, the Calf of Man
In the Faeroes, Fugloy and Streymoy
In Iceland, Hvalbakur and Tvísker
In Maine, the Georges Islands in Knox County
In Nova Scotia, an island near Yarmouth (? in Tusket Is.)
In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Cape Breton
In Newfoundland, ‘Penguin Island’ off Cape La Hune (south) and ‘Penguin Island’ near Cape Freels (east)
In Greenland, Leif’s and Erik den Røde’s Islands, near Angmagssalik.
There is no doubt that the main population, when history overtook the great auk, was around the island of Newfoundland, and particularly upon Funk Island, where, according to Peters and Burleigh (1951), it was probably first seen in 1170 by some early Norse explorers of the New World from Greenland.
When Jacques Cartier visited Funk Island on his first voyage to Newfoundland in May 1534 his crews filled two boats with the birds in less than half an hour, and every ship salted down five or six barrelfuls. Two years later the voyager Robert Hore came to one of the Penguin Islands or Funk Island, and found it full of auks and their eggs. They spread their sails from ship to shore and drove a great number of the birds on board upon the sails; and they took many eggs. By 1578 it was the normal thing for French and British crews in the Gulf of St. Lawrence or on the Newfoundland Banks to stock their ships with auk-meat, stopping at the Bird Rocks, or Penguin Islands or Funk Island, and driving the great auks aboard on planks. Today there is nothing but old ships’ logs and travellers’ diaries to record where the western auks once lived in thousands, save on Funk Island, where a great many bones have been found.
It seems clear, from the account of Peters and Burleigh, that the great auk became extinct in Newfoundland in about 1800. George Cartwright (1792), who lived in Newfoundland Labrador for most of the period 1770–1786, and who often sailed across the Straits of Belle Isle to northern Newfoundland, only logged personal meetings with great auks in his diary twice, on 4 August 1771 and 10 June 1774. On a visit to Fogo Island harbour on 5 July 1785 he wrote:
“A boat came in from Funk Island laden with birds, chiefly penguins. Funk Island is a small flat island-rock, about twenty leagues east of the island of Fogo, in the latitude of 50° north. Innumerable flocks of sea-fowl breed upon it every summer, which are of great service to the poor inhabitants of Fogo; who make voyages there to load with birds and eggs. When the water is smooth, they make their shallop fast to the shore, lay their gang-boards from the gunwale of the boat to the rocks, and then drive as many penguins on board as she will hold; for, the wings of those birds being remarkably short, they cannot fly. But it has been customary of late years, for several crews of men to live all the summer on that island, for the sole purpose of killing birds for the sake of their feathers, the destruction which they have made is incredible. If a stop is not soon put to that practice, the whole breed will be diminished to almost nothing, particularly the penguins: for this is now the only island they have left to breed upon; all others lying so near to the shores of Newfoundland, they are continually robbed. The birds which the people bring from thence, they salt and eat, in lieu of salted pork. It is a very extraordinary thing (yet a certain fact) that the Red, or Wild Indians, of Newfoundland should every year visit that island; for, it is not to be seen from the Fogo hills, they have no knowledge of the compass, nor ever had any intercourse with any other nation, to be informed of its situation. How they came by their information, will most likely remain a secret among themselves.”
FIG. 13
Known (•) and putative (Θ) breeding-places of the great auk.
Nobody knows when the Norse-Gaels of St. Kilda came first to Hirta, their main island, and established Britain’s most interesting colony of wildfowlers. Certainly by 1549 there was a stable human community on St. Kilda, whose life was based to a large extent on “wyld foullis” (D. Monro, 1774). In about 1682 the Lord Register, Sir George M’Kenzie of Tarbat, gave an account (1818) of St. Kilda to Sir Robert Sibbald. He probably did not visit St. Kilda himself, but he says: “There be many sorts of … fowls; some of them of strange shapes, among which there is one they call the Gare fowl, which is bigger than any goose, and hath eggs as big almost as those of the Ostrich. Among the other commodities they export out of the island, this is none of the meanest. They take the fat of these fowls that frequent the island, and stuff the stomach of this fowl with it, which they preserve by hanging it near the chimney, where it is dryed with the smoke, and they sell it to their neighbours on the continent, as a remedy they use for aches and pains.”
When Martin Martin (1698), tutor to the son of the islands’ laird, the MacLeod of MacLeod, arrived at St. Kilda in June 1697 he wrote a classic and accurate account of its natural history, which included this:
“The Sea-Fowl are, first, Gairfowl, being the stateliest, as well as the largest Sort, and above the Size of a Solan Goose, of a black Colour, red about the Eyes, a large white Spot under each, a long broad Bill; it stands stately, its whole Body erected, its Wings short, flies not at all; lays its Egg upon the bare Rock, which, if taken away, she lays no more for that year; she is whole footed, and has the hatching Spot upon her Breast, i.e. a bare spot from which the Feathers have fallen off with the Heat in hatching; its Egg is twice as big as that of a Solan Goose, and is variously spotted, Black, Green, and Dark; it comes without Regard to any wind, appears the first of May, and goes
