Abstract

The Great Auk was a goose-sized penguin-like seabird superbly adapted for underwater flight. Indigenous peoples hunted them but had little impact on numbers. But once Europeans stumbled upon the Great Auks’ New World breeding colonies in the 16th century, they couldn’t believe their luck. Those colonies became fast-food restaurants, with hungry sailors, gorging themselves on the liver-flavoured auk flesh and stripping the bird of its feathers to stuff mattresses.

The last few birds were killed in the name of science in 1844, but the Great Auk lived on, with collectors obsessing over their skins, eggs and skeletons through dodgy dealings involving staggering amounts of money. One hundred and eighty years after the last great auks were killed, ornithologist Tim Birkhead found himself the recipient of the archive of a man who accumulated more Great Auk skins and eggs than anyone else. Those relics — all tainted with pathological obsession, money and skulduggery —comprise the Great Auk’s extraordinary but revealing afterlife.