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"This little book is a fitting memorial to the lost penguin of the northern seas. It's a labour of love." Informationen zum Autor 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. Klappentext Part scientific mystery, part cultural history, part intellectual archaeology, Who Killed the Great Auk? vividly tells the story of the extinction that helped launch the first conservation movement. The Great Auk was a large, flightless bird with tiny wings and an enormous beak. Its clumsy, erect gait on land made it an easy target for sailors and landsmen alike, who hunted it for its ample flesh and soft down, and eagerly gathered its eggs. Over time, the Great Auk began to appear lessfrequently; then rarely; then never again. By the end of the nineteenth century, even the most intrepid explorers could no longer find this once-common bird. Gaskell shows how the Great Auk's disappearance became a cause celebre. It sparked a frenzy among collectors, fascinated writers such asCharles Kingsley, and obsessed such influential ornithologists as John Wolley and John James Audubon, who helped push for the first legislation to protect seabirds. But as Gaskell shows, the extinction of the Great Auk was not a straightforward tale of overhunting. In this subtle, nuanced book, hereveals the ways in which its fate was inextricably bound up with the social, economic, and political history of the time. Who Killed the Great Auk? is nature writing at its best. From the journey of Audubon to Labrador to the hardships of life in early Newfoundland, it takes readers on a tour of some of the wildest and coldest places on earth. And at the end of the story, we understand a little more clearly howwe came to value even the oddest inhabitants of the natural world. Zusammenfassung 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. Charl...
