A coastal feast for the senses

Damien Enright counts his blessings living by the sea.

WE’RE lucky to have the sea near us. Fish guts, fish bones, crab carapaces, prawn heads, even meat bones, we throw off the pier. The gulls swoop down in spectacular mop-up operations, or the detritus sinks to the bottom for the benefit of scavenging sea-life, including prawns and crabs. So, it’s natural recycling; we may end up eating the prawns that eat the prawn heads, or creatures that eat our leftovers feed the fish which we will, later, eat.

I gave the dozen sandwiches left over from my son’s birthday party to the nesting ravens out on the cliff top and they attacked them with great gusto. A parent bird sampled them, presumably to establish they weren’t noxious and no threat to the fledglings. It then delivered them, one by one, to the nest. “Ham or beef? With or without mustard?”, it croaked, offering a neat-cut, triangular sandwich to its chicks.

nDuring a brief visit to London, I went to a Spanish restaurant called La Galicia, on Portobello Road, and was charmed with the atmosphere and the food. Geneticists say that we Irish are Gallegos, that came from that part of Spain.

My friend had octopus, and I vowed to take our last octopus out of the freezer and ask my wife to cook it. In the kitchen, my lame efforts result in my having half the meal ready when the other half isn’t half cooked. It’s just a matter of practice, I’m told…

As more and more exotic marine species appear on the fishmongers’ slabs, octopus may soon be on offer. The answer to tenderising octopus is to leave it in the freezer for a week or two.

It is delicious then; Pulpo a la Feria, sliced in pieces the size of two-euro coins and served warm, on a flat board, sprinkled with paprika. My fishermen friends and others kindly endow me with octopus now and then.

Also, the seashore is the optimum place to meet the summer migrants, avian, and, of course, human, arriving in Ireland.

nOn Sunday, April 20, when — in an east wind and driving rain — intrepid birders walked the road to the Old Head of Kinsale lighthouse at the crack of dawn, they met, literally, hundreds of small birds, overnight arrivals from Europe, heading inland past them, chiffchaffs, willow warblers and, less common, whitethroats and pied flycatchers. A little bunting and a red-breasted flycatcher were among the exotic species seen.

When the east wind blows, it carries these birds from Central Europe and Asia. At home, they are flying north on their traditional migration routes to nest in the temperate regions, just as our summer migrants fly north to these islands from Africa. However, when storms blow from the east, they are caught up in the drift and find themselves blown to Ireland or beyond. Rain brings them down to earth, so the windier and wetter the better for the bird-watchers.

Dedicated birders study the wind patterns. South winds in springtime bring cuckoos, martins, swallows and swifts. In winter, hard weather and north winds bring flocks of redwings, fieldfares and starlings from Scandinavia and Russia to Ireland. Once again, the headlands, especially where there are lighthouses, are the landfalls for the migrants, no doubt welcome beacons in the dark, inhospitable tempest of the sky.

Last week, at south coast beaches, whimbrels, like slim curlews, gathered in large flocks, migrating north. Readers who live by the sea, or in coastal cities, may well hear them passing over at night, whinnying calls high above, in the darkness.

* In a field opposite my home, three horses graze, two white and one brown. When the white horses lie on the grass, they leave a patina of hair, like a dusting of frost, while the other horse leaves a dark, brown mat. Jackdaws come in pairs and harvest the hair for their nests. Sometimes, one of the pair gathers white hair, and walks about with an increasing large white moustache, and its mate with a brown one. Whether they are colour-blind, or don’t care, or like the mix of home décor, who knows?