Country sights and sounds
John Shelley
A great necessity has fallen upon the land. The casualties are many and recovery will be slow. We have food, more than we know what to do with; it is the wild animals and birds that are hard pressed.
Fallow deer came to the edge of the garden and would have come further if it were not for the dog. They found a touch of green around the septic tank, the first they have seen for many weeks, no doubt, and cropped the new grass back to the roots in moments before wandering on in their relentless search for sustenance. They are poor specimens, gaunt, with rough coats, lacking the grace that normally typifies their breed.
We found others, lying dead upon the moor, their carcasses chewed and bones scattered. These were victims, not of hunger, but of the war on deer. Shot and left where they fell, they are a grim caricature of something amiss. At least their bodies were food for the fox and the badger.
It is not uncommon for rats and mice to continue to breed throughout an Irish winter. All they need is a moderate climate and plenty of food; they, in turn, are a meal for the carnivores. I think there has been little reproduction on their part since the turn of the year, so that this has been a hard time for those animals that like, and often need, to eat them.
We sometimes catch a glimpse of the badger on our travels, and close to home in the woods we like to stop at the badger’s latrine, just to get an idea of the number of these beasts that are around the place. They have a particular toilet area that they use night after night. (I know a man who gathered their dung and built an interesting and enviable career out of examining its contents.) Our local sett appears to have dwindled from a dozen or so adults to just two or three, which is more than disappointing.
Badgers are reputed to be one of the very few wild animals that actually care for their dead, conducting funerals and sharing in communal burials. I think that this must not be true, but cannot know it. When we stumbled upon a dug-out sett and found the skulls and various bones of two half-grown badger cubs, victims of illegal so-called sport, we knew that no attempt had been made to inter them, and that they had lain where they had been slain.
That discovery had made for a sad few moments. On the way home we had found a pine marten on the side of the road, clipped by a car and instantly killed. By the light colour of its bib and its slight stature we knew it was a male. It was poorly thin.
While the redwing and fieldfare flocks had been with us there had been plenty of food for the martens. Indeed, the woods had been one clump of torn feathers after another, each a sign of the demise of another of these northern thrushes, it being either snatched by an owl or sparrow hawk (pictured left), or pounced upon while it slept, by marten or mink.
Most of these have gone back to the place from which they came; a few are hanging around. Winter will not be finished until the last of these birds have gone home to their breeding grounds in Iceland and Greenland. It is a long flight on an empty belly. We are waiting, almost impatiently, for them to go. The whooper swans will follow, and in their place we will be welcoming other kinds of birds.
Already the first of the sand martins have started to arrive. A small flock were spotted flying over the western shore of Lough Carra in the last week of March, twittering excitedly and swooping low over the water. They must surely be wondering what they came here for.
There will be more soon. Even as you read this the swallows will have joined them; there will be whimbrel on the lake shore and warblers in the hedgerows. Log on to the excellent Mayo Birdwatch website and see how to help with the latest Countryside Bird Survey. If we should need an excuse to get out and explore somewhere new in the fullness and fatness of spring and early summer, here it is.
