Magpie horses around to feather his nest

Magpies, evidently, are given to feeding on the thick coat of a horse, along with their jackdaw flying companions.

THE warm weather brought mornings of mist to the south-west coast where the sun sometimes didn’t burn through until midday. On one such morning, I watched fascinated as a magpie, followed by a queue of four jackdaws plucked hair from a compliant horse in a misty orchard.

One after the other, they took turns to perch on its side and pull clumps of hair from its flanks as it lay, its legs folded under it, seemingly unconcerned by their attentions.

Presumably, the birds were nest-building, and the object was to provide a cosy lining for their expected chicks. In general, they formed an orderly queue, each waiting until its predecessor had finished and flown away.

However, scraps did sometimes break out between the jackdaws and they harangued one another loudly with sharp, metallic caws. The horse sat placidly, throughout.

One especially industrious jackdaw didn’t fly off until it had such a large beakful that it seemed to be wearing a luxuriant red moustache. Would the horse have any hair left by the time they were finished, I wondered. Talk about a bad hair day! It was already looking distinctly moth-eaten but, perhaps, given the very warm weather it was glad to lose some of its thick coat. That night, the sky was covered in soft, grey cloud, like the down on a cygnet’s breast with the pale moon set in it, floating along a tunnel of blue.

Meanwhile, some overseas visitors who took a trip out from Courtmacsherry in an angling boat were joined by a school of 150 dolphins, swimming and surfacing so close to the deck that they could almost touch them. Ester Koopvanschap, a wetland conservation expert from Holland, took marvellous pictures. That night, her video was shown on the big screen in The Anchor Bar in Courtmacsherry and everybody marvelled at the amazing marine life off Ireland’s shores. A basking shark was also seen alongside the boat but, unlike the dolphins, it showed no interest in humans as it cruised along, its huge maw open, filtering the sea.

Also in the Anchor Bar I heard about a flock of 10 tiny birds landing on an oil rig service boat skippered by Herman O’Driscoll when it was 26 miles from land, out near the Kinsale rigs. Pat Hurley, who told me about it, was aboard and one bird perched on his hand. He was fairly sure they were firecrests, rare but annual visitors to the south-west coast in spring and autumn, tiny creatures, smaller than a wren. The publican’s copy of Dempsey and Clery’s Guide to Irish Birds was called upon to assist with the identification. That led to him telling us about seeing a hawk chasing arriving swallows far out at sea.

The hawk was, likely, a hobby, again rarely seen in Ireland but a regular May visitor to the south coast, a fast and agile aerial hunter, capable of taking martins, swallows and even swifts on the wing. Indeed, its long, slim wings are like those of a swift.

Despite the joys of spring and the glorious weather, a few things put me in a right bad mood as I drove home from Cork the other day.

There is still no visible sign reading “public property” on the fenced-in lay-by with picnic tables beside the Bandon River just beyond Innishannon.

In the past, visitors have told me they haven’t stopped to enjoy the fine view, the rapids on the river and the herons, or sometimes kingfishers, seen fishing there because they thought the space belonged to the caravan snack-bar parked there and they would be obliged to buy. On the contrary, the facilities were put there at public expense for public enjoyment, not to provide a prime location with convenient tables for the snack-bar. Now that the stall seems ready to re-open, it is time the local authority erected a clearly visible sign to protect the public’s rights.

Between Bandon and Timoleague, signs warned that verge cutting was in train. Verge cutting? Yes, but large swathes of roadside hedge were shredded and torn and any birds nests in them couldn’t have survived. There will be fledglings in the nests now. And it is illegal to cut hedges at this time of year.