Last of the Garefowl

Press, 9 November 1984, Page 14

Last of the Garefowl

By

BEVERLEY McCULLOCH

“On a day between the second and fifthe day of June, 1844, a

boat of fourteen men, under the leadership of Vilhjalmur Hakonarsson, sailed the fourteen miles from Kirkjuvogur to Eldey; the sea was rough and only three men could get ashore ... They found two Gar efowls (or Great Auks) and an egg. Ketils-

son smashed the egg. ... the others each caught and killed an Auk. On their way home the men sold the skins ... to a bird stuffer at Reykjavik.” Since that day, no Great Auk has been seen alive by anybody, anywhere.

In its heyday, the Great Auk or Garefowl was probably very common, found on many islands and on mainland sites around the North Atlantic. It was large, flightless, erect-standing sea bird bearing a remarkable resemblance to the present day penguins both in its stance and distinctive black and white colouration.

It was, in fact the original “penguin”, a name that is probably derived from the Latin, pinguis, meaning “fat”. When very similar birds were discovered in the southern ocean the name was applied to them also. It became theirs alone

with the extinction of the Great Auk.

As with the modern penguin, there was a tremendbus contrast between the Great Auk’s clumsiness and vulnerability on land and its speed and agility in the water. Its small wings, useless for flying, were used most effectively for underwater swimming.

Speed and manoeuvrability were needed to catch the fish which formed its principal food. Contemporary accounts, still in existence, describe how difficult it was to catch a Great Auk in the water where it could outpace a rowing boat and remain submerged for

minutes at a time. When the three men on Eldey clubbed to death the last two known Garefowl they were responsible of the extinction of a species which had been around for a long time. Twenty thousand years ago, Neanderthal man was eating Garefowl on Gibraltar during the Great Ice Age, and Great

Auk bones have been found in considerable quantities in the kitchen middens of humans in sites widely separate in space and time. But the prehistoric exploitation of the Great Auk was probably confined to birds on passage and in

their mainland, winter quarters. The final collapse and extinction of the species took place when man, in sea-going ships, was able to reach the main, remote, breeding havens of the Garefowl, the islands of the North Atlantic. The Great Auk was a hopelessly clumsy, slowmoving bird when it came ashore to breed, utterly helpless in the face of ruthless human predation. It 'was killed in vast numbers for

its meat, oil, and feathers, and its eggs were collected in thousands. Its exploitation as a supply of fresh meat for sailors began in the sixteenth century and there is a record that in 1578 no less than 400 ships, English, French and Spanish, provisioned with Garefowl at one of their principal breeding grounds, Funk Island. No species can withstand that sort of pressure and by 1800 Great Auks had become extremely scarce and the few remaining individuals were being sought as valuable rarities for collections.

The Great Auk is only one of many species which owe their final extinction to man. The rough sailors who sought the bird as a source of food on their long and difficult voyages probably have a greater excuse for the damage they did than the collectors, whose greed and ambition to have represented in their collection a specimen of a fast-vanishing species, brought about the helpless birds’ final demise.

The Southern Hemisphere penguins, which have so much in common with the Great Auk, have been spared a similar fate. Garefowl were unfortunate enough to be an ideal food supply, available (from man’s point of view) in the right place at the right time. So thought Richard Whitbourne. In 1622 he praised God, who “made the innocencie of so poor a creature ... an admirable instrument for the sustention of man.”