In 1950, a group of undergraduate students visited Eynhallow for the day during their Orkney field trip – not realising that this would be the start of one of the world’s longest-running wildlife population studies.

75 years of research into the lives of the fulmars on the island has produced much insight into the life of an enigmatic seabird, an ocean wanderer, as Prof. Paul Thompson of the University of Aberdeen explains. He looks at questions that have driven the research, scientists who have shaped the study, techniques used – and some of the fascinating findings that have emerged. Poet Genevieve Carver joins him with some of her work from time spent with fulmars and scientists on Eynhallow.

Genevieve Carver won the 2022 Moth Nature Writing Prize for her poem ‘Postcards from a Fulmar‘.