sentences:  Beginning in the 16th century, seafarers took the birds in especially great numbers to fill ships' larders, and by the mid-19th century, the great auk was extinct.Likewise, the short-tailed albatross of the North Pacific was heavily harvested at what seems to have been its primary colony on Torishima Island.Millions of birds were killed in less than two decades at the end of the 19th century.