Bay birds get the cold shoulder
That was last week. I’m told it’s happened only four times in 40 years. In the big freeze of 1979, ice stretched from one side of the bay to the other, covering many square miles.
Last week, wader birds stood in groups of 10 or 20, like lags in a prison yard, featheres ruffled against the cold, wings wrapped around themselves so far as that is possible. They looked frozen, these godwits, greenshanks and redshanks. They nest in Iceland in spring and summer: after breeding they head back to mild Ireland, the Gulf Stream coasts, the soft mists and temperate rains.
This year, they must be disappointed. In fact, if birds could look disgruntled, that would a good description of their body language. They looked cheesed off, nowhere to go, nothing to do. The tide was in so there was no soft mud to probe in, no juicy ragworms, lug worms or sand hoppers.
The ducks looked disenchanted too. Teal and widgeon were gathered in coveys on the ice, not even quacking. Possibly, they were beyond complaining or commenting, just drawn in on themselves, disgusted. They reminded me of the people in the pub on the question of the national bailout.
On the other side of the bay, fields of snow came down almost to the water’s edge and the grey clouds behind were heavy with new snow soon to fall. Some shelduck, their colours muted in the grey light, dabbled on the edge of the ice floes or braved the waves beyond it. I could imagine a killer whale or leopard seal surfacing at any minute and snaffling them. Or, maybe, it would be a walrus, looking startled, heaving himself onto the ice, his moustache dripping icicles.
Perhaps these imaginings resulted from the cold going to my head, but such conditions aren’t often seen in temperate west Cork. Sea ice? Had the Arctic moved south? Where was the Gulf Stream gone? Well, I knew it wasn’t gone, but it certainly seemed to be resting. Some doom-sayers maintain global warming could sink it, that the lighter melt-water from Greenland glaciers could ride on top of the heavier salt water and change it’s course. I’m sure it hasn’t come to that yet. However, if it were to be like this every winter... Well, it makes us realise how fortunate we are!
New birds are arriving in the garden by the dozen, feeding at the peanut diner and the wholemeal bread we’ve put out. It’s much better than white bread the bird-nutritionists tell us — five times as good. If birds could talk, they wouldn’t say, “It’s the best thing since sliced bread!”. Most sliced bread is white and doesn’t give them the wing-power, in the long term it might not even keep them aloft.
We’ve had two blackcaps at the peanut feeder, a cock and a hen at different times. One can’t help boasting... By the time this article is published, it is highly likely that the first redwing thrushes and fieldfares will have arrived.
Meanwhile, down on the bay, we have a spoonbill and there’s a goosander on the River Argideen. Strangers were abroad when the tide is out and there is a narrow margin of pebbles and brown and green weed — turnstones dashing about, a few ringed plover, a grey plover, birds we never normally see on the bay margins alongside the pavement. Even the redshanks don’t freak out as we walk past.
Meanwhile, many of the birds on the ice stand on one leg. Waders’ legs do not conduct the cold, apparently. Because there are no large muscles in the lower leg, very little blood is flowing through them and they are kept at a low temperature. The small veins that are present are subdivided so that those carrying in warm arterial blood are interwoven with those returning the cold, venous blood. Because the heat is transferred, it is conserved and not lost. So waders can spend hours at a time up to their thighs in cold water.
I hear that a few hardy humans are still dipping daily off a beach on the Seven Heads. Good for them. Cold water brings blood to the skin capillaries. I imagine their skin toning must be enviable.
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