NATURE: Dusk is a stirring time for Lough Carra’s wildlife – feathered and four legged

Late autumn. The forest is now perfect. Perfectly coloured, perfect in abundance, and perfectly quiet.
It was so while I watched the starlings coming in to roost. When a thousand had joined their flight before dusk, a hawk came to see and to fly in their midst. He is not there for the fun of it. No, his eyes saw beyond the choreography of murmuration and past the purple, spotted sheen of winter plumage to the warm flesh within.
The hawks flight was impressive, that of the starlings more so. Though he soared alongside, though he stooped, steeply chased and banked with aplomb, it was to no avail and he came away, finally, with nothing in those cruel, black thorns that are his claws.
I watched as more thousands joined the swirling flock until they finally fell from the sky and into the reeds wherein they roost each night. Only then did the hawk return, this time unseen. There came to my ears a great flurry of wings, an excited chatter, then a repeated scream from an invisible victim plucked from the middle of the crowd and carried off to become a temporary silhouette at the top of a leafless birch.
It was then that the fallow buck threw his voice from the dark of that treed island. Over and again he called, until I walked, as if under compulsion, to where I might watch him emerge with his harem of does, these with offspring still at foot.
With a tree at my back and the lake stretched before me I was in a position of comfort. Indeed, I could stay there as long as I wanted, and would, I told myself, keep watch until such time as the deer came out to feed or I was discovered, whichever came the sooner.
Both came together. While I was focused on that island buck, another came walking along the very path where I stood. When he caught sight of me and ran back the way he had come, I thought he wouldn’t return, but the lure of the girls must have been greater than his fear of humans, for ten minutes later he walked right by my place of concealment.
Before that, a young animal, one of this year’s fawns, came bouncing along the narrow deer path, going past me in one direction before turning and bouncing back to join the rest of the small herd.
Among adult fallow, this ‘pronging’ is a sign of alarm or distress. I think this fellow was just having fun, for his mother met and led him away to the pasture where this small herd graze each night.
If it were not for the deer I might not have been on the lakeshore that late. I’d not have seen the day fade west, not seen the blackness of night nor the blanket of stars that followed. The rail that squealed, excited at day’s end, would have remained unheard. The moorhen pair that squabbled on the shore would have done so only for themselves and the little grebes that skittered and splashed in mock battle would somehow be wasted.
When the heron cast an angry cry across the bay I had to wait longer, until he flew into view and dropped to the edge of the shallow, where he might intercept fish coming in to feed while deer shuffled, unseen, through the longer grass into the pasture beyond.
And so night came to be. As sight fades, hearing becomes enriched. As long as we see, the sound of a night-flying beetle remains unheard. Now, though, the leathered flight of bats still on the wing this late comes and goes. The steady pace of some small creature moves through the grass; there are no footsteps – just a strange, nocturnal gliding.
To be out there in autumn dark is to enter a new, auditory world. Each noise can be heard in isolation, but also contributes to the whole. The experience becomes immersive, enveloping. Night becomes greater than day. It is nowhere silent, and all consuming.
Then, from the dark surround of blackened velvet, comes the moment I have waited for, that challenging command from the dominant island buck. Suddenly more near to hand than I had hoped, his voice reverberates, shaking even the heart of man. When it grows louder and groans, I must make my way home.

•  Michael Kingdon, a naturalist and keen fisherman, lives on the shores of Mayo’s Lough Carra – the best example of a shallow marl lake in western Europe and therefore an SAC of enormous ecological and conservation importance.