Midnight in the New Forest in old Hampshire, writes Kevin Myers: and a choir of owls calling to one another, the sound rising and falling like the scend of the sea.
Occasionally there was the sharper cry of the shriek owl, penetrating and harsh, before the calmer, more mellifluous ocean-sounds resumed. This was not a freak night in the forest; this was a perfectly normal night, as night-birds called to one another in their strange avian symphony.
I have never heard an owl in Ireland, and have seen but one, though I live in the country and am surrounded by trees. In my part of Kildare, the 18th century has been good to us: there are woodlands and plantations to the very horizon, but if there are owls there, they are entirely mute, and they shun not merely the sun but even the merest hint of moonlight.
Why is this? Why have we so few forms of bird-life compared with the island next door? I can understand that certain mammals didn't make it up here in time as we seceded from mainland Europe at about the same time as the Ice Age ended. Only those fast enough to move north in the wake of the receding glaciers managed to get on to this spit of land before it went walkabout in the Atlantic. Hence no snakes, and no moles - a logical absence since the latter would have been too blind to read the invitation to the leaving-party, and far too slow to make it here even if they had.
But that doesn't explain the absence of voles, which are frisky critters and should have arrived here in good time before we waved goodbye to Britain. After all, their cousins the mice did. Contrary to what W.B. Yeats thought, there are no water rats - more properly, water-voles - in Ireland either. But if badgers got here, why didn't water rats?
Nor does the slowness theory explain the absence of the European weasel, which is small and perfectly horrid if you are tiny and tasty, and is certainly swift enough to have got here before our train pulled out of the station.
However, stoats - traditionally called weasels in Ireland - did manage to make it aboard. Provided you are not lower in its food chain, stoats are delightful little creatures: they undulate as they walk, and a family of stoats in movement resembles little serpents crossing a lake. And who does not love to see a cluster of stoats lolling around after dinner, using the dental floss to remove those last fragments of tasty woodmouse from between the molars?
Most baffling of all was the failure of the European brown hare to reach here before we headed out into the Atlantic, though some fools introduced it into Ireland in the 19th century. However, it didn't take, and the hare that we have is one of our loveliest mammals, the blue or mountain hare. The hare was greatly revered in Gaelic culture, and properly: it is a thoughtful, wise animal. I used regularly to see one loping across the field beside my house, but I haven't seen a hare in over a year. Has anyone else noticed a reduction in hare numbers? These are legged animals, for whom the Straits of Dover and St George's Channel present formidable obstacles. The same is not true of our birds. So, back to the opening question: why do we have almost no owls? For all the relative absence of trees in Ireland, there are still woodlands enough to justify conspicuous populations of owls. And even if Irish owls haven't got the vole population (aside, that is, from west Munster, where the little rodents have been mysteriously introduced) which constitute dinner for most of their European cousins, there are still lots of lovely rats and mice to turn into owlet.
But absence of a suitable prey does not explain why we have no woodpeckers. The great spotted woodpecker is found throughout Britain, and the green woodpecker is absent only from the Scottish Highlands; yet in Ireland, there is no woodpecker population at all. All right, we haven't got huge forests - but nor has London, and its parks are full of woodpeckers.
Another extremely common bird in England and Wales is the nuthatch, which is often found at garden feeders, but again, it is simply not present in Ireland; similarly the marsh tit and willow tit. Yes, these are birds with small wings, and perhaps they are not disposed to travel long distances. But this does not explain why we have no buzzards or kites, which are both large and plentiful - and, more to the point, in Wales.
All these birds - big and small - have to do is wait for a favourable breeze, and with a sufficient spirit of adventure - of the kind that took them to Britain in the first place - to come over here. Yet they don't.
It is very strange. It's almost as if there were an invisible wall which prevents such birds even turning up even as strays in Wexford, Wicklow or Antrim, where the journey time is modest, and where the Irish coast is visible from Pembroke, Holyhead and Ayrshire. Does anyone have the least idea why this should be so? There we are: an end to a remarkably clement, even amiable diary, all prompted by a couple of nights in the New Forest. Old age creeping up on him? Mellow reflectiveness now his permanent mode? Not a bit of it! With this brief exercise in naturalist waffle now concluded, it'll be blood and snotters again tomorrow. Grrrrr.