Great auk (Pen Gwyn in Welsh), or, because the great auk had such large white circles on its head. When European explorers discovered what today are known as penguins in the Southern Hemisphere, they noticed their similar appearance to the great auk and named them after this bird, although biologically, they are not closely related. Whalers also lumped the northern and southern birds together under the common name "woggins". Standing about tall and weighing approximately as adult birds, the flightless great auk was the second-largest member of both its family and the order Charadriiformes, surpassed only by the mancalline "Miomancalla". The great
Flightless cormorant A large oil spill would pose a threat. However, although the flightless cormorant population is small and its range limited, the ability of the species to breed quickly can allow it to recover from disasters as long as the population remains above a critical level. The flightless cormorant is one of the world's rarest birds. A survey carried out by the Charles Darwin Research Station in 2004 indicated that the species has a population of about 1,500 individuals. In 2009, BirdLife International set the number of individuals of the flightless cormorant at only 900 individuals, although a more recent estimate