During summers of my college years, I was a counselor at Camp Keewaydin near Middlebury, Vt., where pranks were attributed to the “Great Auk.” For instance, some of us, under cover of dark, rolled a ...

Great auks (Pinguinus impennis) were large flightless birds that thrived on rocky islands in the North Atlantic for thousands of years. However, humans hunted them to extinction within just a few ...

In June 1844, farmers Jón Brandsson and Sigurður Ísleifsson, along with 12 others, made the perilous journey by boat from Iceland to the island of Eldey. They were searching for great auks: black and ...

The whereabouts of the skin of the last female great auk, which has puzzled experts for 180 years, has been confirmed, according to a study. Sandra Toombs Image first published in Explorers Journal ...

Tim Birkhead, a British ornithologist, introduced me to the extremely ancient and flightless sea bird, Auk, that made a living in the North Atlantic for millennia. Birkhead, who has written several ...

James Beard Award winner Birdsall (The Man Who Ate Too Much) provides an eye-opening exploration of how food has helped shape “the queer arc of survival” in American life. Continue reading » I’ll ...

In 1844, the Great Auk went the way of the Dodo, and eventually so would mid-19th century fashions. Fortunately, artist Brian R. Williams has immortalized both, drawing extinct birds wearing clothes ...