The Great Auk once ranged over the entire North Atlantic. But it had the misfortune of being both edible and endowed with fetching down. By 1844, humans had hunted it into extinction. This is Brian R. Williams's illustration of a stately Great Auk, dressed in the high fashions of Western Europe at the time. He also made similar illustrations of the Imperial Woodpecker, the Carolina Parakeet, the Laughing Owl and other extinct birds.
Link -via Flavorwire
I find this both dignified and somber; not that these beautiful birds need any additional dignity beyond than what was already endowed to them by nature . . . still, these prints kind of help remind me of what has been lost.
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