Visit
Mark Fellowes Nature Photography
Perhaps it's something that comes with age, or maybe it's just certain cues that evoke strong memories. I don't know, perhaps both, but I've just gone through an odd morning. This reverie all began by my finding two long out-of-print books online, which arrived from Dublin this morning. These are both local bird reports, each covering ten years worth of birds seen in Clare and Limerick.
The first, Birds of North Munster, was my bible when it came out. Co-edited by Phil Brennan, who quite simply took me under his wing from the age of 13, it covered birds seen in the area from 1972-1981. These were the targets, the kinds of species that could turn up and the places to look. Waders on the Shannon, wild geese on the bogs, divers and shearwaters on the Atlantic. I had already been hooked on seeking out wildlife for a few years, but then I became old enough to actually focus on becoming more than just an observer, but someone who could contribute to all of this.
The second report covered the following ten years, and includes many of my memories of notable species, places and people over that formative period of roaming the west of Ireland.
- My first unusual find, a summering whooper swan in 1982, followed by my first rarity - a male bluethroat mist-netted at the Shannon Airport Lagoon that October.
- Waders at the Lagoon were the speciality, with curlew sandpipers and little stints adding to the huge numbers of dunlin, plovers and godwits. A stunning Wilson's phalarope the next year just added to the joy of birding that site.
- Choughs, peregrines and auks on the Cliffs of Moher.
- A flock(!) of four male surf scoters off Liscannor, and the large numbers of common scoters and divers around the coastline.
- Later, sea watches at the Bridges of Ross (now is recognised as one of the best sea-watching locations in Europe) brought in Manx, sooty and a Cory's shearwater, Leach's and storm petrels, all the skuas, grey phalaropes, Sabine's gulls, little auks and the more common sea birds.
- My first experience of 'twitchers' was with the superb belted kingfisher in Ballyvaughan, which brought over (what I thought at the time was) a huge number of British birders (well, about 60; the image below is of Ballyvaughan Bay, the pier on the left was home to the kingfisher, and the bay is a winter haunt of nationally-important numbers of black-throated diver).
- Being a (very) small part of the discovery (well - I tagged along with Phil) of how productive Loop Head was, with Autumn visits producing yellow-browed warblers, garden warbler, Lapland bunting, pied flycatcher, and more rare birds such as a barred warbler and the unforgettable (mainly because I stepped waist-deep into a slurry-pit trying to see if it was heading towards the mist net) Nearctic vagrant, a yellow-rumped warbler.
Birding wasn't always in remote places. Ring-billed gulls were a real rarity then (simply because people weren't looking I think) and to see two together in the centre of Limerick was unheard of, and trips to Ennis dump turned up Iceland and glaucous gulls in the winter. Sometimes there was trips further afield - Forster's tern on Bull Island, snow goose on the Wexford Slobs, and ringing passage migrants on the Saltee Islands, where in one day we processed 263 warblers, with the highlight a wood warbler.
Then of course there's the stuff you find yourself - wintering short-eared owls, merlins, hen harriers, black redstarts (two on a local building site) and snow buntings; looking for peregrine nests in the hills. I still remember my first nest find when I was 12 - a robin's nest in a discarded paint can hidden in a ditch on the boreen, which is how I introduced myself to Phil - he ringed the pulli.
Ringing was the key part of all this - walking across the mud to extract waders in the dark, with nets weighed down by curlews, bungee-powered clap-netting of purple sandpipers, traps for water rail, mist-netting summer reedbeds and winter farms, ringing gull chicks on islands, chasing mute swans in canoes, using tape lures to bring in storm petrels and lamping Manx shearwaters on islands. In total I ringed 62 species, including that wood warbler, pied flycatcher, black redstart, mealy redpoll, puffin, manx shearwater, storm petrel, teal and lots of waders. Perhaps this is why I actually like the smell of bird guano - it reminds me of sea-bird colonies and bird bags.
I started my real birding in 1982, the last year that corncrakes bred locally. The unimproved grassland was perfect for them, and grasshopper warblers reeled in the more rank parts of the fields. Three calling males crek-crek'd through the early summer (I could hear one from my bedroom window), only one the next year, and then none, a symbol of our changing environment. Prior to that, Shannon had been one of the last strongholds of the corncrake in the mid-west of Ireland. A couple of years later, we had our first little egret at the Lagoon, which decided to stay for a few weeks. This impressive, exotic visitor looked out of place under the leaden skies, but they are now widespread throughout the country. You win some and you lose some, but my gut response tells me that corncrakes are more 'natural' here.
One last reminiscence - and a more pleasant one than the last. Coming home for Christmas after my first term away, I met up with Phil, who as well as being a teacher, birder and artist (a real renaissance man!), had a role in advising the airport authorities on how to reduce bird-strikes. This got him (and I tagged along) invited to a special event at the airport - the return of a young bald eagle which had been blown across the Atlantic to its home country. The eagle had pitched up injured in Kerry, was rescued and nursed back to health, and was now being sent back to the States. This had turned into a political jamboree, with Irish and American press coverage and the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) present to send it, crated up, on its way. The eagle was brought out, shown to the press (and us), handed to the Taoiseach, when it promptly bated, battering the poor man with its enormous wings. Does that count as a legitimate tick? I don't know and I don't care, but I remember the silence and barely controlled delight that followed as our country's leader tried to hide his embarrassment...
There has been an invasion of painted lady (Vanessa cardui; click for larger) butterflies into the UK, a movement which some suggest is the largest since the 1960s. In the last week I've seen large numbers and headed into the Harris Garden for an early morning macro session. The light was challenging - harsh and direct, and I looked for either back-lighting opportunities (where fill-flash could take the edge of the shadows) or for insects out of the direct sunlight.
Posts
