THE last great auk in the UK was killed on the Scottish island of St Kilda in 1840. Now the great-great-great nephew of one of the men responsible for killing it has released a lockdown-made album inspired by his family history.

Ewan Macdonald grew up in spa town Strathpeffer with tales of his family’s Hebridean past.

His great-great-grandfather Donald MacKinnon was amongst the inhabitants of St Kilda long before hardship and illness drove the final residents to evacuate in August 1930.

That flitting, which saw the last 36 residents set sail for the mainland, has inspired countless books and the Michael Powell movie classic The Edge of the World, released in 1937.

But 90 years before the evacuation, St Kilda’s population marked another “last”, when a five-strong hunting party including Donald MacKinnon’s brother captured and killed the last known great auk in the UK.

The flightless sea bird, known for its down, had been common across the northern Atlantic until predation by man saw their numbers dwindle, partly driven by demand for its down for use in making pillows.

By 1840, when Lachlan MacKinnon and his friends came across a solitary great auk while seeking seabirds on the cliffs of Stac an Armin, the species had all but vanished from the St Kilda archipelago.

According to an account from the time, they captured the three-foot-tall bird just before a storm hit – and subsequently reasoned that the feathered fowl had cast up the foul weather. Believing it to be a witch, they beat it to death with rocks.

The incident came four years before Icelandic hunters killed the last two known great auks, or garefowl, in the world. Now Macdonald and his ornithologist father Murdo have combined with an international collective of musicians – Chris Jones, Ewan Macdonald, Jess Whelligan, Nathan Bontrager, Richard O’Flynn, Spiff Wiegand and Stuart Graham – to mark both events with an album reinterpreting St Kildan music and stories.

Released under the name garefowl, the Cliffs album was released on streaming sites yesterday, 90 years to the day since the evacuation and draws from archive manuscripts and recordings.

The eight-song collection, which includes three original compositions inspired by the islands, was created and recorded during lockdown, with the musicians passing the tracks around from Scotland to Germany and the USA to create a record as intriguing as St Kilda’s history.

Macdonald, a translator, told the Sunday National: “It’s really hard to imagine what Lachlan MacKinnon and my great-great-grandfather would have made of it. It’s really interesting to think about.

“Part of the attraction of St Kilda as an idea is the combination of a really poignant human story and an element of longing for a lost pre-industrial paradise. From what we know of life there, it was pretty difficult.

“The project is something we had thought about for a long time, and with lockdown we had the time to do it. It was hard to imagine what the final songs would sound like when there was no one else in the room, but it was really exciting to hear what people would send back.

“Gigs were far from our mind, but as soon as we’d finished we thought we’d really like to take it on the road. Hopefully we’ll be able to do that.”

Cliffs is available via Bandcamp, Spotify and Apple Music