STANDING three feet tall, with a curved black beak and glossy black and white feathers, it was one of the most impressive birds ever to call Scotland its home.

The great auk was the country’s answer to the penguin – large, flightless and ungainly on land, yet fast and agile in the water. Yet in the end they became Scotland’s dodo, wiped out by the carelessness of men who hunted them for their meat and feathers, and doomed the species to extinction.

Today, all that remains of the great auk is their little cousins – puffins, razorbills and other seabirds of the same family – and a few preserved remains floating in jars and stuffed carcasses on museum shelves.

Now preparations are being made to commemorate one of the final members of the species to be killed in Scotland with a bronze replica.

The great auk was one of a pair which nested on the Orkney island of Papa Westray, and met its demise at the hands of hunters in 1813. Six years later, in 1819, the bird’s stuffed remains were purchased by the Natural History Museum, and it is only British specimen in existence.

A clay statue was made of the bird to mark the spot where it had been shot, at Fowl Crag, on the north of the island, but this was damaged in a recent storm and lost its head. Although it has been repaired, the replica is only 10in tall and plans are being made to use scans which were taken of its stuffed remains to have a life-size version made in bronze. Jonathan Ford, the ranger on Papa Westray who repaired the damaged clay version, said that a new statue would be a fitting tribute to one of the last great auks of Scotland.

He said: “We’ll always keep the original statue – there’s a lot of history with it and it’s got a long association with the island. But the bronze statue would be life-size and a model of the actual bird which was taken from here, so it would be like it is coming home. They used to be widespread on Papa Westray, and it is very sad that the last ones were driven into extinction.”

Great auks ranged over much of the north Atlantic for thousands of years and could be found nesting in crags and cliffs from America to Europe.

Used as a food source, their remains have been found in sites that were home to Neanderthals in Gibraltar 100,000 years ago, while early humans daubed their images on cave walls 35,000 years ago.

One great auk bone dating from the fifth century was uncovered recently near the Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick, indicating they were also eaten by medieval Scots.

However, they were hunted relentlessly in the 18th and 19th century as European ships spread out across the globe, with sailors using them as living larders they could pack on to boats. Their feathers, which were rich with oil, were also highly prized both as a fuel source and by the down industry as filling for quilts.

Tales have come down from the era of great auks being herded on to boats in large flocks, or used as fuel on treeless islands because they burned so easily.

Their persecution was famously cruel, with hunters advised to strip their feathers while the birds were still alive before leaving them to perish from the elements.

Britain banned the killing of the bird in 1794, except by fishermen. But by then it was too late.

The final great auk found in the British Isles is said to have been taken on a sea stack off of St Kilda, by fishermen hunting gannets.

They tied its feet and took it onboard their boat, only to become superstitious and fearful a few days later during a storm. Believing the bird to be “a maelstrom-conjuring witch”, they beat it to death. The last known great auks were killed on the island of Elday, off the coast of Iceland, by sailors hunting them for a museum collector in 1844.

Scottish Seabird Centre chief executive, Tom Brock said: “The really important thing is it reminds us that animals are still going extinct, even in Scotland. We should not take them for granted. One of the great auk’s close relatives, the puffin, has been put on to the red endangered list.

“We must protect and conserve safeguard seabird populations or more species will go the same way as the great auk.”