All about Auks and Orkney

Hope in the Rising Tide Podcast

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All about Auks and Orkney

On the trail of an extinct seabird and its living relatives

Kirsty Fox

Jun 20, 2025

Transcript

Great Auk sculpture cast in bronze from the taxidermy specimen (photo by Kirsty Fox)

Great Auks are the species which taught 18th Century naturalists that man-made extinction was possible.

In this episode I visited a small island in the Orkney archipelago off the north coast of Scotland. Papay (Papa Westray) is home to under a hundred human residents, but around 150 species of birds are known to visit the island and surrounding waters each year, and many birds nest on the cliffs of Fowl Craig and the maritime heathland of the North Hill RSPB reserve.

The island is notable for its rich history, with landmarks including an ancient neolithic farmstead The Knap of Howar, and a monument to the last Orcadian Great Auk killed close by in 1813, just a few decades before the species went extinct.

Great Auk painting from 1840 by Audubon, John James (1785-1851), Artist (Public Domain) <https://itoldya420.getarchive.net/amp/media/great-auk-adult-96aeaf>

Papay’s Great Auk memorial on Fowl Craig was rebuilt, recast, and relaunched in April 2025. So I sought out the brains behind this project, the Papay Ranger, Jonathan Ford, to interview him about the island’s cultural community, the fame of this extinct seabird, and the sad decline of its living relatives in the Auk family: Atlantic Puffins, Razorbills, Black Guillemots and Common Guillemots. We also discuss the plight of other seabirds on the island including Arctic Terns, Arctic Skuas, and Kittiwakes.

This is perhaps an episode where we struggle to find hope, though the glimmer offered by a sandeel fishing ban in British and Scottish waters offers us something, along with people willing to do battle with fishing lobbyists despite years of lost causes.

MPA = Marine Protected Area

@hopeintherisingtide on Instagram

Jonathan Ford’s wildlife, heritage, and art projects

Jonathan is on Instagram and Facebook as @PapayRanger.