Scourge of starlings a sight to behold

Damien Enright on a stunning November spectacle.

THE leaves rain down. Yes, and they rise up too, and they fly horizontally, the beech leaves, russet and brown.The other morning, I looked up from what I was writing and saw, through the French windows of my workroom, the dead leaves in the yard become possessed and rise in a spiral, going round and round, as high as the roof of the annex, 20-foot high, caught in a sheegaoite, a fairy wind, like the ones my wife tells me used to sometimes arrive in the hayfields in her home place and lift the cut hay into a twister against the blue sky.

Blue sky and the smell of new- mown hay. How far that is from the grey skies and odour of decaying leaves we now suffer in November. But, there’s always something to be seen and, indeed, in the soft Atlantic rain-mists we experience in this part of the world, nature is often to be found in active pursuit of its day-to-day business, rain or mist regardless.

In fact, it’s as if some of the creatures know that mankind won’t be abroad to bother them. As at dawn, they have the world to themselves.

I see foxes crossing the field in the curtains of rain. And rabbits sitting in the rain until the fox arrives. Wet rabbits seem to feed and even groom as nonchalantly as if the sun was shining. A cock pheasant strutted beside our little river the other day and pecked along the banks, its magnificent colours somewhat greyed out by the water vapour in the air. We went to Dromima, near Charleville in north Cork, to see the displays of starlings, many millions of which congregate for crepuscular conviviality above a small pine wood each evening. There, in their myriad they swarm and swoop, swelling into black aerial footballs of perfect rotundity, arrowing into flying bottle-shapes and pouring down bottle necks of their own making, murmurations of starlings (also known as scourge) the local tribes amplified by millions from Siberia, this year especially. It is a sight to behold at fall of light. Our guide was Gerry Hamilton, who has observed them and filmed them every year they come. In 2009 they are back again, and we were privileged to see them. Should you decide to travel to witness and enjoy their extraordinary displays, they are best seen from outside The Cottage Pub at the Charleville end of the village, looking northwest. They sometimes stay around until March but if they’ve suddenly decamped, you can always take a walk in the beautiful Ballyhoura Mountains.

On a beach in south Cork, I saw a farmer dragging his ploughshare through the sand, no doubt to clean it. I’m not sure this is good ecological practice, and I’d bring it to the attention of the IFA, an organisation which, I believe, is sympathetic to nature, albeit it cannot control the rare but regular rogue member who blocks walking paths, spreads slurry unseasonably, massacres hedgerows in May or lets farm effluent drain into watercourses or the sea. The farmer in question was carefully avoiding the area of the beach where lugworm casts spotted the sand in dense profusion. Heaven help the poor, fat, ugly finger-thick lugs if a plough blade carved through them and their homes. They are the humble stuff that feeds the fishes, the bass and flats, the smooth hounds and dragonets, and the birds too, those that have beaks long enough to reach them and strong enough to extract them. I imagine a curlew could manage it; certainly curlews take ragworms.

Ragworms have an unfortunate name. Anyone who has ever seen them swimming – which they do – will remember them as beautiful, iridescent creatures, amazing when they take to the water and often twelve inches long. We do not expect to see worms swimming, with frills (actually legs) rippling along their sides. Even less, do we expect to see pieces of worms swimming, but this will happen with ragworm because their undulating motions are controlled by their nervous systems, not their brains. We’ve heard of chickens running around with their heads cut off. Ragworms go one better; even after they have lost their heads and are cut into segments, each segment continues to swim.