Butchered for feather beds: the brutal end of the great auk

The great auk was a large seabird of the family Alcidae, a group which includes the razorbill, guillemot and puffin, breeding species of North Atlantic cliffs, islands and skerries. Before it was hunted to extinction in the 1840s, the great auk inhabited an ecological niche equivalent to that of penguins in the southern hemisphere. Flightless, and able to nest only on low-lying shorelines, it was nonetheless perfectly adapted to life at sea. Short, flipper-like wings enabled it to dive to prodigious depths for food; soft down and oily flesh kept it warm. Smartly attired in black and white, and with a massive bill, it stood nearly 3ft tall.

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The same traits that so suited the great auk to its oceanic life made it both conspicuous and vulnerable. As Tim Birkhead reminds us in this wide-ranging and deeply researched study, human exploitation of the species goes back millennia. Yet for most of history, appetite was held in check by reverence. It was not until the 16th century, when European explorers discovered its largest breeding colony, Funk Island, 40 miles off Newfoundland, that a fatal desecration got under way.

From that point on, the great auk’s world population was entirely integrated into the expanding frontier of European trade. At first the birds were salted and barrelled to provision transatlantic ships; but the demand for down-filled mattresses finally brought total devastation. In the 18th century, crews of men were sent to Funk for the entirety of the breeding season. They penned the feathered residents in stone enclosures, boiling them alive to free their plumes.