Damien Enright: Encountering a flock of whimbrels at Dunworley, West Cork

They may well have just arrived having flown from wintering habitats in west Africa or as far south as Namibia

A young whimbrel on migration from Arctic or Icelandic breeding grounds to Africa.

April has stepped aside for May and so far, it's the same-old-same-old, thank the Gods. Yes, there have been declines in nature everywhere but I see here in front of me on the great empty canvas of Courtmacsherry Bay, the same birds as always: the shelduck, gorgeous in breeding colours and the godwits, sporting red breasts, and the whimbrels stopping off on their flight from west Africa to Iceland where they will scrape out a nest on the tundra and hatch their clutch of eggs. We'll see them again in August and September and here, in temperate West Cork and Cork Harbour, individuals increasingly overwinter with us.

On Thursday evening, my wife, walking with a friend at Dunworley, West Cork, saw a small flock of birds on the clifftop overlooking the beaches and wondered what they were. The sun was setting behind them; their plumage, vivid in the evening light, was brown and fluffed up, almost farmyard-hen like; they were long-legged, with long necks, but she couldn't describe the beaks, impossible to see with the strong sun behind them. The flock rose and flew to a field (on which the loneliest ex-pub in Ireland is currently for sale) on the opposite of the road. I went to check them out the next day. They weren't there.