Rain makes an unwelcome splash

A FLURRY on the surface and a panicked splashing in the water only yards away from my feet as I walked along the beach on the first bright day for weeks: it was a shoal of big mullet caught unawares as they basked in the shallow water warmed by the sun.

Then, a sudden explosion of wings, and a chorus of alarm cries as four turnstones, invisible amongst the seaweed, rose from under my feet and went skimming away to further up the shore. Out on the channel, great northern divers, mergansers and cormorants dived and reappeared, breaking the glittering skin of the water. After weeks of fogs and downpours, overnight, the world had been transformed.

October weather on the southwest coast would have surely tested any rambler’s resolve. Farmers and fishermen had to go out in it; ramblers didn’t. Only the brave braved the mucky paths.

Last Sunday week, about five o’clock, my wife and I, stricken with house-fever, thought the rain had finally stopped. As we drove to a sheltered lane, I reminisced about dreary childhood weeks when we were housebound by the rain, all part of the Irish experience. “Oh,” she said, “so your childhood days weren’t always sunny after all”.

We left the car and had been walking for only 10 minutes when the heavens opened. Head down into the slanting stair-rods of rain, we beat our way back to the car. Drenched through, we set off to drive home, my arm leaking onto the gear stick. It had been an exhilarating experience but we were so wet we couldn’t even stop for a warming drop at the pub.

However, the next evening the sky was red, and on the morning after we opened the curtains to a blue sky and sun twinkling on the bay. Postponing work until later, I set off to explore walks I hadn’t visited for weeks. The world I found could hardly have been lovelier or more full of interest. Bright orange waxcap mushroom shone as if shellacked in the green grass, Red Admiral and Speckled Wood butterflies roosted on sunny walls, flocks of finches — perhaps from Scandinavia — scoured bare fields and flocks of sparrows chattered in the gardens. May the blithe days of the last October week continue into the month to come.

One of my sons, a literature student, is also an observer of nature and this week gave me two snippets of personal observation.

One is that congers eels are happiest when lying on their backs. He knows this from having fed them in the wall of the dock in Galway opposite which he lives. He experimentally dropped scraps of dish down the dock wall and saw them come out to take it. They are delicate, careful eaters, not gulping down an offering but nosing it to ascertain its quality. However, apparently, if swimming off a pier and clambering back up the walls, one should be careful about sticking one’s toes in footholds as these may well be occupied by congers who fancy a tender toe. They have been drawn to reside there by anglers gutting fish and discarding protein-rich fish livers and roe over the side.

Also, he saw 10 herons roosting in a line, near the Galway docks. Ten herons together would seem to be quite a crowd. He tells me that such a gathering is called a ‘siege of herons’ but who thought up that collective noun, we, neither of us, know.

The salient feature of the siege was that many were juveniles, like ‘our’ Ron, the bird that fell out of the nest in March and which we adopted — and which still arrives regularly looking for food. However, unlike Ron, some of these seemed very thin indeed, and one unhappy bird was hardly half of Ron’s height and stood somewhat apart from the others. It is doubtful that this bird — probably the ‘runt’ of a late litter (I see herons occasionally rear second broods) — or many of the other juveniles will make it through the winter, when herons are often decimated if the weather is hard.

Some of my neighbours may believe that Ron won’t live to see the spring. They contend we are fattening him up for Christmas.