Damien Enright: Yellow fields evoke the canvases of modernist Mondrian

Buzzards are returnees. Extinct in the late 1800s, they slowly began recolonisation in the 1930s, writes Damien Enright

May is here, and everything is in flower. Looking down from a plane on continental Europe, one would think a bright yellow mould infects the land. It’s not mould; it’s fields of flowering rape seed. In Ireland, we prefer grass and cows.

My son tells me that in the ancient baroque town of Budejovice in Bavaria, rape seed blows in from the fields and blankets everything, even cats sleeping in sunny doorways. The statues of the biblical hero, Samson, and his companions on the famous town fountain, wear yellow berets and yellow capes, and sounds of cars and footsteps are as muted as after a dusting of snow.

A few years ago, flying from Cork over Britain, I saw the earth below me patterned by rectangles or squares of vivid yellow rape between the green swathes of pasture and brown plains of tillage.

In the sunlight, the landscape for miles was like a vast artwork by the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, except that the shapes were not blocks of primary colours but all the gradations of yellow created by the plants and the sun.

Flying over Ireland at 33,000ft (or whatever) a couple of weeks ago on our return from the islands in the sun, the Canaries, we hit a remarkable day for the time of year — mentioned in last week’s column — and have had some truly sunscreen, West Cork weather 70% of the time since. Often, the days have been sunnier than La Gomera

(although I wouldn’t venture in the sea).

In the Canaries this year, weather patterns were reversed (as in many other places). We know, from 37 years experience of La Gomera, that in December, January, and February, the very worst one can expect is a few days of rain, cloud or chilly wind per month — 30% non-typical Canary Islands weather against 70% of the usual sun and clear, blue skies. This year, it was 70% dull and 30% sparkling. Some one-week holidaymakers got no more than a single day on the beach.

Hikers seeking good walks, rather than the sun, didn’t mind. In the Gomeran forests, laurel and heather trees reach over 10m high, and only dappled light reaches the paths. The woods, all through April, were a choir of blackbirds singing as if to outdo one another. I’d never realised there were so many up there in the cloud forests. On some hillsides, devastated trees are still apparent from the enormous fires of 2012, but some recovery is evident.

In January, this year three dead buzzards were found dumped in a field at Ring near Clonakilty. National Parks and Wildlife Service staff took them to Cork for post-mortems. X-rays showed no sign of lead shot, but two birds were headless and one was missing a leg. Toxicology results showed high levels of carbofuran poison and two rodenticides in the birds’ livers and stomachs. Carbofuran is illegal in Ireland. Buzzards principally prey on rats and mice, but also eat voles, rabbits, birds, frogs, beetles, and earthworms. They pose no threat to livestock.

Why were they poisoned? Could it be a shooter? If it was a self-appointed (or, more likely, self-interested) pheasant-protector (one who raises birds destined to be shot out of the sky with small lead pellets smacking into them at high velocity), I would suggest that pheasants are already very well protected, raised in nurseries, with food and shelter provided by those that intend to shoot them once they reach a ‘sporting’ size.

Wild buzzards do not have such nurturing. They must hunt for food. In past times, when every farm raised its chickens and ducks, their unwelcome presence was understandable. Times were hard and the birdstock ranked second to the livestock in feeding the family. Necessity, not sport, signed the buzzards’ death warrants.

However, are they now agonisingly poisoned purely in order to promote ‘sport’? And what about the missing heads, the missing leg? It’s strange indeed that the poisoner troubled to recover the birds and mutilate them. Was it a ‘hate’ crime, I ask?

Or was it ritualistic? Maybe the killers weren’t sportsmen at all but had some notion that these newly-localised birds embody evils spirts which, by flying in our West Cork skies, will bring pestilence to the land? Visitors, reading accounts, might wonder ...

Buzzards are returnees. Extinct in the late 1800s, they slowly began recolonisation in the 1930s.

“Buzzards are only relatively recent arrivals to this part of Ireland, the first birds breeding around Clonakilty within the last 10 years,” said the local conservation ranger.

“This area is close to the western edge of their range in Ireland so it’s particularly sad to lose them.”