MORNING SENTINEL • January 13, 2021
The great auks were a flightless bird that went extinct on or about June 1844. By the 100s A.D. it was leaving its rocky-shore breeding grounds in the British Isles for sites more northerly and westerly. They may have bred along the coast of Maine and southern New England. European fishermen in the 1500s and 1600s, possibly earlier, discovered that half-mile-long Funk Island was a huge breeding site for great auks. They started routinely killing birds for food and feathers, and eventually they just slaughtered them for the fun of it. The Earth is undergoing right now its sixth mass extinction event since multicellular life took hard hold here about 600 million years ago. It is due in large part to the activities of humans over the last 500 years. About the time the slaughter of the great auks seems to have gotten seriously under way. ~ Dana Wilde