Another Life:Somewhere out there beyond the islands, seabirds are still streaming south. If I were a bit younger (well, quite a bit) and a mad-keen birder, those north-westerly winds would have lured me up to Kilcummin Head in north Co Mayo for a long seawatch session - hours peering out from the cliffs through a telescope, anorak zipped to the chin, writes Michael Viney.
The north-west wind and stinging showers that usher an Atlantic low towards Scotland are just the job for the autumn migration.
It's then, as an admirable new Irish bird book reminds us, that the "numbers of seabirds passing headlands along the entire N and W coasts can be enormous.
Thousands of seabirds have been pushed into large bays and close to the coast, and are struggling to fly back W, out to sea." Finding Birds in Ireland (Gill & Macmillan, €19.99), the definitive new bird Baedeker from Eric Dempsey and Michael O'Clery, has no doubt that Kilcummin Head, facing into a north-west wind, is "one of the best seawatching sites in Europe".
One day last month, indeed, a watch by two Belfast birders from 7.15am to 4.30pm produced the following: 6,000-odd sooty shearwaters, 21 great shearwaters, one Balearic shearwater, 40 pomarine skuas, 94 great skuas, 58 Arctic skuas, 21 Sabine's gulls, five grey phalaropes, 30 Leach's petrels, two storm petrels, 200 Arctic terns, two great northern divers and - the prize of all - one Fea's petrel "seen at 2.30 for around three minutes".
That's a list worth a whole day of Thermos flasks and sandwiches, and one, no doubt, to flummox any ordinary, land-bound birdwatcher peering after oddities in hedgerows and trees. But seawatching takes one's hopes soaring over the ocean to a whole new prospect of the seldom-seen and utterly rare.
Fea's petrel is the current sought-after novelty for European birders. It breeds in small colonies in burrows on Madeira and the Cape Verde islands and is "very few in number, threatened", according to Collins Bird Guide, which is enough to turn any twitcher on. "Fea's and Zino's petrels are thought to be near-inseparable in the field," the guide adds. "Fea's is larger than Zino's, and has slightly heavier bill." So extra marks for sorting that out through a telescope, eyes watering in the wind, when one has never seen either bird before.
Just what the petrel was doing in Killala Bay initially escaped me, since the autumn migrants are pouring south, not north. But keeping track of seabird travels is half the game. Sooty and great shearwaters breed in the southern hemisphere but have been spending their "winter" in the north Atlantic. Our Manx shearwaters, on the other hand, breeding in burrows on the Blaskets and other bare islands, head off for the winter to good fishing grounds off Argentina. Sabine's gulls (even prettier than kittiwakes) breed in the High Arctic above North America and usually migrate to the west coast of Africa (where they mingle with Irish-born terns and gannets), so the north-west winds must have blown them off course this year.
Finding Birds in Ireland lists the best coastal lookout points, together with the best conditions and times of year, in a refreshingly honest way. Greenore Point, in Co Wexford, for example, "is only really worth visiting in strong E or NE winds, preferably with rain . . ." My goodness, who would? But these are just some of the 400 birdwatching sites, north and south, that Dempsey and O'Clery describe, along with painstaking detail in how to reach them ("backtrack to the point where you took the right turn, having passed the tall trees . . .").
Michael O'Clery supplies not only fine paintings of birds but the book's exceptional maps. I described it as a Baedeker advisedly, since its county-by-county selection of sites and information on how to get there, along with notes on currency and Irish road and telephone systems, aim it squarely at the visiting ecotourist as well as the native birder. It's also bang up to date on what's around: lots of little egrets on the River Slaney all year; up to three ospreys in spring, perching on posts in the middle of Lough Beg on the Co Derry border - and, of course, the Glenveagh golden eagles.
The help of local enthusiasts has been greatly valued: how else might one have known that, in Bundoran, Co Donegal, "the rough ground below the Great Northern Hotel has been a regular wintering site for twite, with up to 30 present", or that there's a chance of a dotterel on the top of Cuilcagh Mountain? The need for Wellington boots for stalking American waders at the autumn pools behind the strand at Ballycotton, Co Cork, is just part of the veteran birders' lore in which the book is steeped.
EyeOnNature
On a fen walk I found a fawn-coloured moth with two big black eyes on a big head. Very distinctively, it whizzed its wings in situ like helicopter rotors. It was on a scabious flower. John P Colleran, Pollardstown, Co Kildare
It was a hummingbird hawkmoth.
At Killester Dart station I see black spots on the leaves of chestnut and sycamore. Hopefully, this is not some terrible disease. I have not noticed them in other years.
Cris ní Choisdealbha, Cill Easra, BÁC The trees are the victims of a leaf spot or anthracnose fungal disease. On sycamore, it is called sycamore tar.
A pair of large birds of prey have been prominent near a wood in my locality. I have now decided they are a pair of buzzards. But the bird books say that buzzards are only to be found in the north-east corner of Ireland, with Rathlin Island their stronghold. Seamus Ryan, Moneygall, Co Tipperary
In recent years buzzards have spread southward and are certainly reported from Co Tipperary.
Michael Viney welcomes observations at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo.
E-mail: viney@anu.ie. Please include a postal address.