ANOTHER LIFE: To speak of mere "updraughts" on our side of the hill does scant justice to the sea winds that habitually rush at the ridge, but there are days in early summer when a stiff breeze from an ocean with one white sail does, indeed, lift both the air and the spirits. It is then that I may look for the kestrel, the "windhover", poised above the rocky slopes and keeping to its station with what seems the barest quiver of chestnut wings, writes Michael Viney.
Up close, every muscle and feather is straining in the buffeting wind to steady the bird's intent inspection of the ground - but at least it is not having to beat its wings to hover, as it would if the air were still. It can take 10 times more energy for a kestrel to hunt on the wing than to watch from a telegraph pole, as it mostly does in winter. Only in the breeding season, with a family demanding food, does the male have to forage as hang-glider for so many hours of the day.
Hovering brings a faster rate of catch. According to Andrew Village's Scottish studies, it can take as many as 20 field voles a day to feed chicks and parents. Ireland has no field voles, and its field mice (more properly woodmice, Apodemus sylvatica) have to be shared with owls and other raptors. Since woodmice are mainly nocturnal, the kestrels are often still hovering after sunset.
There are, of course, many other things to pounce on: fledglings of skylarks, pipits and wrens; lizards, frogs, beetles, grasshoppers. Once, at a ridge in the Wicklow mountains, at least 17 kestrels assembled to feed on an army of antler moth caterpillars. Any unexpected glut of prey will tempt a kestrel to cache some food for later on: a nest of baby rats, for example, could last a couple of days.
With such adaptability, kestrels can live almost anywhere. They do not build nests (though they'll use the old ones of crows), and while our nearest kestrels are probably using the tower of an old, deserted church tucked under the ridge, Falco tinnunculus is at home in any high and roomy hole in a wall. Friends who watched kestrels rearing their young from the window of a flat in Brixton in London were living at the heart of one of Britain's densest kestrel populations.
Hovering with pointed wings, the kestrel is probably familiar to most Irish people, but it is not as abundant as the sparrowhawk (with rounded wings), and the latest distribution maps show much of Ireland matching the bird's scarcity in western Scotland and Wales.
The densest breeding areas are in Longford and Meath, and a "hot spot" persists in Howth. But there has been a decline in the west and its islands, where the woodmouse has lost the tillage and hay of former times.
With the well-discussed exception of the hen harrier, besieged by particular upland changes, many of Ireland's birds of prey are doing rather well. Since peregrine falcons took to nesting in quarries as well as on mountain and island cliffs, its numbers are probably the healthiest in a century. In the wake of the ban on land poisoning, the buzzard is fast recolonising parts of Ireland where it has not been seen for a hundred years or more.
In Donegal, the reintroduction of the golden eagle at Glenveigh has restored a noble silhouette to the mountain valleys; and even the osprey, the fish eagle, now well restored in Scotland, has begun to prospect some Irish lakes. At Ballymote, in Co Sligo, a whole range of majestic European raptors - eagles and owls among them - are shown in free-flying displays at the new Irish Raptor Research Centre, the conservationist venture of German ornithologists Lothar and Regina Muschketat (www.eaglesflying.com).
The latest wild raptor on the increase in Ireland is the goshawk, a bird indelibly associated with medieval falconry. In the current Wings magazine of BirdWatch Ireland, the Irish Raptor Study Group lists widespread sightings and possible breeding over recent years.
The fierce-eyed Accipiter gentilis looks rather like an outsize sparrowhawk but is mostly extremely secretive in its forest habitats. It was once a prized capture from the ancient Irish woodlands, traded as rent to the feudal overlord or sent to England to be flown at cranes for the recreation of kings and nobles.
Its slow comeback in Britain over the past 50 years has depended on European goshawks released by, or escaped from, falconers. Breeding has been confirmed in two counties in Northern Ireland - a fitting start, since Tyrone was where the best goshawks were kidnapped for the English crown.
Some readers found the website URL for A Donegal Hedgerow in last Saturday's column indistinct. It is as follows: http//:homepage.eircom.net/~hedgerow