Birds of a feather fight together

WALKING is the flavour of the season.

In an interview on RTÉ’s Nationwide last week, I was glad to be able to say that the farmers of Ireland, whose reluctance to allow passage over their land I’ve often criticised, have swung in behind local initiatives to create maintained, waymarked routes and will be helping our beleaguered economy by doing so.

Perhaps some of the English, who love walking, will come. I hope that my book, Scenic Walks in West Cork, published last week by The Collins Press, will help seduce them to ramble in Ireland. It’s a pretty book, well-bound, with many colour photographs. Each of the 21 walks is accompanied by a commentary on the natural history, human history and prehistory of the area.

Last week was ‘dawn chorus week.’ Our household heron’s dawn chorus is not bird song but a flap, squawk and tap at the window for breakfast. We had some trouble feeding him during the wild weather, when the fishing boats couldn’t go out. He’s not partial to Donegal Catch, so we fed him frozen fish and chicken skins. Then, local fishermen, the O’Donovan brothers, said they’d be going to sea and would bring me in some bycatch. I was at the pier at half-past midnight when they ‘landed’, and came home with a bag of mixed dragonet, gurnard, and small whiting as heavy as a Ryanair take-aboard suitcase. The bird had disappeared earlier and hadn’t come home. Lots of fish and no heron to eat it.

Its night-time roost, a box borrowed from a pal at the pier and labelled ‘Union Hall Fishermen’s Co Ltd, No Unauthorised Use,’ was empty. There was no spectral figure of ‘our’ bird, shoulders-hunched and head-under-wing on the balcony railing. Perhaps he had exchanged his free lunches for the hard life, a future in nature with all its hazards and insecurities; perhaps the wild heron that had come earlier had wooed him away. It was probably a sibling, from the same tree-top nest from which our foundling had fallen seven weeks before.

The drama had begun when, that morning, I had seen a heron alight in the grass across our stream. While ‘ours’, as yet, had no more than flapped from pillar to post, it was an adept flyer, but I could tell by its grey legs and the clump of wiry-looking feathers on its crown that it was young. In adulthood, this would develop into a sleek, glossy pigtail that would twirl in the breeze and shine in the sunlight. Perhaps it is this topknot that gives the heron the local name Curly-the-Bogs. The stranger was hoping to share the free lunches dispensed by friendly two-legged creatures, my family and I.

Repeated stand-offs between the two birds ensued. I watched in fascination, taking photographs. Because our adoptee was unfazed by my nearness, the stranger realised I didn’t present a threat. It flew onto the woodpile and surveyed the yard; it glided across the stream and strutted down the driveway. While ‘our’ bird stalked it, the interloper strolled about with pretended innocence as if to say “I’m just out for a walk, and what’s your problem anyway?” Sometimes, they described exploratory minuets about one another, a sort of ‘dance of the herons’, with occasional rear-ups and wing-flapping. For an hour, our bird stood sentinel on the driveway. At last, the invader left.

That night, when he flew off and didn’t reappear, we assumed he was consorting with other herons and had returned to the wild — which was what we wanted. However, next morning, he was back again, waiting for breakfast.

This week, he has spent some nights with us, and some not. He stayed around to hear Jedward, standing within earshot on the balcony rail outside the French window. My brother, who happened to phone from Spain, wondered if, like the octopus and the World Cup, he could predict the winner by standing on one leg or two.

He is growing into a magnificent bird. His daytime roost is the bonnet of my old Mercedes; it takes only minutes to wash down. Today, as I lifted the hose, he rose on capacious wings and I stood enthralled as our one-time scraggly orphan soared over the tree tops, a master of the air.

* Damien Enright’s book Scenic Walks in West Cork, Collins Press, €14.99, is out now and available in all good bookshops.