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F u n k
Great Auk Graveyard
An Audio Portrait of Funk Island
2002
CD Liner Notes
Funk Island is an Ecological Reserve off the northeast coast of Newfoundland. It has been designated by the Important Bird Areas Program as an Important Bird Area site of global significance. Funk Island once hosted the largest known breeding colony of Great Auks in the world. The Great Auk is now extinct. On Funk Island today, Common Murres and other seabirds nest among the remains of the Great Auk Graveyard.
This audio portrait is brought to you by the Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program in Newfoundland and Labrador and the Alder Institute. The IBA program in Newfoundland and Labrador is spearheaded by the Natural History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador in partnership with the Canadian Nature Federation. The manufacture of this CD was made possible by a Toronto Dominion Friends of the Environment Foundation grant to the Natural History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Funk Island is a granite rock in the middle of the northwest Atlantic ocean. Fishermen have used it to navigate and find their fishing grounds in the rich waters nearby. Marine birds that spend the rest of the year at sea have used the bare rock of Funk Island as a place to lay their eggs and raise their chicks. For a few short months of summer the granite of Funk comes alive, dotted and pulsing with the life and death dramas of hundreds of thousands of seabirds struggling to feed their chicks. Before their extinction, the black and white penguin like bodies that covered Funk Island were those of Great Auks. Today, there are no Great Auks left living on earth. Many were slaughtered for commerce where they bred in the largest number - on Funk Island. Today the black and white penguin like bodies that cover Funk Island belong to Common Murres. Lest we take them for granted, this project bears witness to Funk Islands' darker past as Great Auk Graveyard of the northwest Atlantic.
Voices heard on this CD (in order of appearance)
Seabird biologists Iain Stenhouse and Gail Davoren, Skipper Larry Easton,
retired sealer and fisherman Jack Troake, seabird biologist Bill Montevecchi
and archaeologist Priscilla Renouf. Peter Dorrington (in the original French)
and Jean Claude Girardin (English translation) stand in for Jacques Cartier.
The main bird sounds belong to thousands of Common Murres and their chicks
leaving Funk Island at the end of the breeding season, 2000.
Music
Paddy the Bat Mind Where You're At and Same Old Tale That the
Crow Told Me performed by Dorman Ralph from the CD Dorman Ralph
serial #SS9908-04. Permission granted by SingSong Inc. (www.singsong.nfld.com)
Images
The photographs show Common Murres nesting on contemporary Funk Island amidst
the remains of the now extinct Great Auks that once bred there, and remnants
of stone installations used in the industrialized slaughter of those Great
Auks. These photographs were provided by Bill Montevecchi who has spent the
past quarter century studying seabirds on Funk Island.
Illustration
The Great Auk skull depicted on the front cover is from Funk Island and was
drawn by Julie Zickefoose. It
is used here with the kind permission of the artist.
Thanks to all of the above and to the following for their help with this project; Rita Anderson, Rachel Bryant, Dave Fifield, Merrill Francis and Elizabeth Zedel.
Recorded and produced by Janet Russell.
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