Cuskinny’s wildlife in the frame

A CYNIC might suspect that birder and photographer Ronan McLaughlin this month choked Cuskinny Marsh of its oxygen — and consequently its marine life — as a stunt for the upcoming launch of his calendar collection of exquisite wildlife photography, and to make his images all the rarer, as he has tracked the months and the seasons on this widely-sung and justly-appreciated marsh beauty spot.

Widely-sung? It is if you listen to Derek Mooney’s annual National Bird Dawn Chorus Day, as Cuskinny in Cork harbour’s eastern reaches has been the location no less than seven times for the broadcast — its birds are veritable divas. They are such divas that nature gave them an unexpected milk bath after late September’s unseasonally warm weather turned the marsh’s shallow, salt waters a brackish, milky white. The phenomenon hadn’t been noted in living memory at Cuskinny and is now under examination by relevant bodies and individuals from Cork County Council, marine/fisheries investigators, as well as by University College Cork and Cork Institute of Technology scientists.

It is likely to be a coincidence of natural phenomena, rather than human interference. A cause could be high levels of weed built up, such as sea lettuce, rotting in tepid autumnal waters causing sudden eutrophication and consequent oxygen depletion. All fish life died rapidly and quick-witted birds, like terns and egrets, came to feed off the dead and the dying, with bellied-up shrimps as an added delicacy in their cocktail, to a background air and stench of hydrogen sulphide.