RSPB's South Stack Cliffs are also a good bet, with Fulmars, Kittiwakes and
auks offshore and a small number of Gannets at the weekend.
Online book news company Publishers Weekly announced on Wednesday that Jan Thornhill is the winner of the CAD30,000 2017 TD Canadian Children's Literature Award for her illustrated nonfiction picture book The Tragic Tale of the Great
Auk.
Thornhill narrates the path to extinction of a seabird species with a tragic flaw: the great
auk, through evolution, had become flightless.
Then stuff the seal with freshly dead
auks. A quick wrenching of the neck or pressing on the breast bone to crush the heart of the
auk is the best way to kill the bird.
Glaucous gull (Larus hyperboreus) and arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) are considered the most important predators on little
auks (Alle alle), taking eggs, chicks, fledglings, and adult birds within their whole breeding range (Stempniewicz, 2001).
According to Harding, that could have a domino effect--one that could hurt little
auks. "With the [ocean] current change, the distribution of the water masses is going to change, so the food availability for the little
auks would change," she says.
Cold north winds which blew down the east coast in early November brought with them large numbers of little
auks, a relative of the puffin, but easily distinguished because it is only the size of a starling.
GALE force winds have blown thousands of Little
Auks on to the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast.
'Lemmings': Lemmings I learn do not swarm to death/browning the spring sea/as if it had grown a fur coat.//It seems merely that in their folk-wanderings/population pressure/many are pushed in the sea and drowned.//But I want old stories to be true/what price lives of lemmings/great
auks, dodos, first-born of Egypt/against the death of a legend.
Now we learn that Great
Auks, the marauding Shetland bonxies, which used to feed on fish discarded at sea, are feeding instead on young puffins and guillemots because, with the shrinking of the fleet, there are so few discards any more.
Ellis presents sea creatures that either are extinct or are seriously threatened, including whales, great
auks, cod, and coral.
The great
auks, Purcell reports, were "hunted for their feathers ...
The true northern penguin, the great
auk (family Alcidae), was also flightless, a member of the Charadriiformes related to gulls,
auks, and lapwings.
The islands are internationally renowned for their bird life with large colonies of kittiwakes, razorbills,
auks and puffins.
Totally unwary, the great
auks dumbly stood their ground and let Cartier's crew club them to death.
