Overview

The Great Auk is one of the world's most famous extinct birds. It was undoubtedly a most curious creature: a flightless bird with tiny wings, it stood upright like a human, and sported an enormous beak. On land, the Great Auk was clumsy and awkward, but it was perfectly adapted for swift and efficient movement in the sea, where it spent the large part of the year. In its heyday, it populated the North Atlantic, from Western Europe across to North America, and was a familiar sight to islanders and coastal dwellers when, each May, it would climb ashore for the short breeding season. Yet by the mid-nineteenth century sightings of the bird were but rare occurrences, and just a few decades later even the most assiduous Victorian explorers could not find it. So what happened to the Great Auk? What - or who - caused it to disappear from the northern oceans? Jeremy A. Gaskell draws on eyewitness accounts spanning some four centuries to relate the tale of the Great Auk's extinction. He tells how the Great Auk was hunted by sailors, coastal dwellers, and merchants for its ample flesh, its eggs, and its soft down. He shows how the fate of the Great Auk was inextricably bound up with the prevailing social, economic, and political conditions of the late 18th century. It was also a result of widespread scientific misapprehensions about the nature and geographical range of this mysterious seabird. The disappearance of the Great Auk had a considerable impact on the public imagination of the late 19th Century. Specimens of the birds or their eggs soon began to fetch astronomical prices among collectors. Charles Kingsley used the last Great Auk as a character in The Water Babies. It became the stuff of legend. More importantly, its plight keenly interested a number of great Victorian ornithologists, men like John Wolley, Alfred Newton, and John James Audubon. Later, these self-same men were to cause some of the very first legislation on seabird protection to come into place. As a result this is also the story of the beginnings of bird conservation. This intriguing book takes the reader on a tour of some of the wildest and coldest places on earth, in its attempt to uncover the history of the last days of the Great Auk. We travel with Audubon to Labrador, sail to the remote Scottish island of St Kilda, experience the hardship of life in the colonies of Newfoundland, and follow the peregrinations of intrepid naturalists as they put to sea in search of the very last of the Great Auks. The text is enhanced by numerous maps, photographs, and line drawings, and includes a fine original colour frontispiece by Jan Wilczur.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jeremy Gaskell
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.30cm , Height: 1.70cm , Length: 24.30cm
Weight:   0.520kg
ISBN:  

9780198564782

ISBN 10:   0198564783
Pages:   240
Publication Date:   09 November 2000
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Introduction - Who killed the Great Auk? 1: This rare and noble bird 2: Geirfuglasker: The Icelandic bird skerries 3: Travels with Audubon in Labrador 4: Westward ho! 5: A visit to Funk Island 6: Books of authority 7: Wild foulis biggand - The Great Auk on St. Kilda 8: The New-Found-Land 9: Uncouth regions 10: Mercenary and cruel 11: The old wisdom of the Faeroe Islands 12: In search of the Great Auk 13: Last appearances 14: Generation after generation 15: Bird protection: A pressing need 16: An Act of Parliament Epilogue Appendices: Description of the Great Auk based on a specimen acquired by Audubon in London; Discussion of Great Auk nomenclature; Abridged version of the Act for the Preservation of Sea Birds, 1869; The Victorian egg collectors.

Reviews

This little book is a fitting memorial to the lost penguin of the northern seas. It's a labour of love. Evening Standard, Monday 27th November 2000

Gaskell combines natural history, exploration, and social history into a single gripping tale. He describes the social conditions that led to the Great Auk's demise but also tells why so little is known of the bird despite its fmiliatriy to naturalists. --Library Journal<br>

<br> Gaskell combines natural history, exploration, and social history into a single gripping tale. He describes the social conditions that led to the Great Auk's demise but also tells why so little is known of the bird despite its fmiliatriy to naturalists. --Library Journal<p><br>

This little book is a fitting memorial to the lost penguin of the northern seas. It's a labour of love. * Evening Standard, Monday 27th November 2000 *

Author Information

Jeremy A. Gaskell, c/o A M Gaskell, Lyndale, Luxborough, Watchet, Somerset, TA23 0SJ impennis44@hotmail.com Jeremy Gaskell's interest in the Great Auk dates from his teens, when he first planned a visit to its traditional breeding grounds in Iceland. An active ornithologist, he has travelled as far afield as Thailand, and has also acquired extensive knowledge of the birds of the Middle East. He is the author of a number of articles and academic papers on subjects as diverse as the early history of British ornithology, and seabird identification. In 1998 he broadcast a history of the Great Auk on the BBC World Service.

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