Page 199 - The Secret Museum

names, including geirfugl, gearbhul, aponar, binocle, moyack, ‘The Wobble’,

garfugel (from gar, the Old English word for ‘spear’, because of the great auk’s
prominent and impressive beak, and fugel, for ‘bird’, from which we get the word
‘fowl’). It was also known as a ‘penguin’, which meant ‘white head’ in Welsh.

Great auks were the original penguins. English and Spanish mariners who sailed
the South Seas saw the birds we now call penguins and named them after the great
auk. Pingouin is still the French word for the great auk and its relative the razorbill.
The original French name for the southern birds is manchot, which means ‘armless’,
because of how they look when they waddle.

There used to be millions of great auks around the shores of Canada, Greenland,

Iceland and Great Britain, foraging in shallow waters eating fish, crabs and plankton.
Once a year, they’d land on rocky offshore islands and lay an egg. Then they would
incubate it in an upright position in a nest made from droppings until it hatched. The
parents would then take turns feeding the chick, for up to two weeks, until the chick
was ready to take to the sea alone.

The species was so abundant, it is almost like us trying to imagine that in the
future there will be no seagulls, except for stuffed ones buried in museum archives.
Unfortunately, being flightless, great auks were also terribly easy to catch and

delicious to eat. The last great auk recorded in Britain wasn’t even eaten. It was
caught in the summer of 1840 on the remote Atlantic island of St Kilda. Imprisoned
for three days in a bothy, blamed for a storm, tried as a witch and sentenced to death,
the poor bird was beaten for an hour with two large stones before it died.

Thankfully, there are still some stuffed great auks at Tring for us to see, including
one in a case that is sometimes loaned to other museums. The eggs curator once took
it to Madrid for an exhibition; he flew with easyjet and kept it in a metal suitcase,
which he thought about handcuffing to his arm for safekeeping.