i6 
LAND & WATER 
July 19, 1917 
Afternoons on the Irish Coast 
By William T. Palmer 
ONE has memories of many charming afternoons 
along the coast of Ireland. There is not a season 
not a month of the year without its picture of 
wild nature. Such a budget of contrasts too. 
There was ice, green and blue and white, piled high along 
tlie Giant's Causeway. For ninety January hours a tempest 
from the cold North had raged, and now, after fury, came 
Peace, a rustling sea and the early sunset flooding the crags 
in crimson glory, magnifying their height, distorting their 
ruggedness. Out there on'the waves a few gulls were resting, 
and a' dark shadow along the horizon presaged the coming of 
winter migrants which the storm had halted among the 
Hebrides and along the western shores of Scotland. A tiny 
V of wild swans slanted across the sea for. some food-bearing 
mud-flat about the mouth of the river Bann, but the ordin- 
ary shore-dwellers had been hustled away, either inland 
or to secluded bays far from this exposed outlook. 
Tliere were afternoons of grey February on Lough Foyle, 
where the white capped waves were never visible more than 
a boat's length ahead, and all the local knowledge of the 
natives failed to bring us within sight of the divers and rare 
ducks. The ears gained more than the eyes on such occasions— 
sometimes the whole cloud was vocal. There were company 
calls, and famfty chuckles: there were feeding cries and 
hungry queries : there were barks and whistles and quackings 
and rattles : there were alarm signals, and either a mighty 
flutter of wings told that the unseen birds had gone away 
through the fog, or a silence which told that the divers were 
making a subm*irine exit from our vicinity. 
■ There were March afternoons when, chilled by the loughs 
of County Down, one waited for the evening passage of 
the wild geese — ^geese which quickly got to know that murder 
was not in the power of the solitary figure on the marshes, 
and which pitched well within observation distance. The 
sentry goose is apt sometimes to make a mistake on that 
point, and a pound of heavy shot crashing into the mass 
of scared birds is the penalty. There is nothing particularly 
striking about this coast unless one choose a firth, a river 
estuary, running up to the mountains of Mourne. March 
too is apt to be a month of boisterous weather. 
The Passage of Migrants 
But April brings forth the sun and the summer migrants 
Ireland is in the hue of passage both for the birds retiring to 
the Arctic and Scandinavia, and for the new-comers which 
fare , as far north as the farthest of the Shetland group. 
There are scores of migrant sea-birds off her coasts, many 
familiar in their season, others not usual to Britain. It is 
only in April, however, that one feels tempted to leave the 
shore for the woods and lanes and water-sides. Scores of 
tiny birds — warblers, Unnets, etc. — have come and are busily 
settling themselves for the summer. The swift and the 
swallow are swinging through the air, but glorious about 
all is the flood of bird song. But the shore is not the 
place for music of this kind. Its birds are vocal either in 
discordant shrieks or wailing calls, with sometimes a sort oi 
faded sweet pipe from the oyster catcher. 
It is full May that calls one back to afternoons on the 
Irish shore. Tliere are sea-birds on the rock towers, on the 
broad cliffs of Donegal : there are sea-birds on the stony 
shores of the bays of Connaught : there are sea-birds on the 
sands and marshes of Clare and Cork. Go where one will, 
there. is the vigorous scream of alarm, the roaring of many 
wings as the bird colony rises from its chosen haunt. There 
is a darkness filled with white, rushing flakes— a veritable 
' snowstorm of birds — as one walks along their shores. Eggs, 
eggs, everywhere, sometimes so closely packed that one 
steps with caution, and so cutely coloured and proportioned 
that a few feet off they are quite invisible. 
June brings one more into touch with the birds of the 
Irish sea-crags. Out in the wilds the osprey has_ still its 
eyrie on some pinnacle where at a glance it may b& informes^ 
of the moving shoals of small fishes. There are great shelves 
sacred to the nesting of the gannet or solan goose — a wicked 
looking bird at any time but most so when the climber comes 
suddenly face to face with it on its breeding station, and the 
long heavy beak is dashed towards his face. The great 
solemn chick is a still weirder sight — ^so utterly different from 
its parents, and tlie most helpless youngster among Biitish 
birds. A young eagle will fan its wings into a flight for 
pleasure : the wren with its ridiculous wisps will adventure 
forth without counting the cost : but the young solan goose 
is a sulky creature indeed, and a real trial to its parents. 
Luckily or unluckily, twins do not occur in gannet-land, 
and the woolly overfed creature may be just the result of 
pampering continued by many generations of proud and 
fooUsh parents. There is far more cheerfulness anyway 
among the razorbills and puffins, the guillemots and shear 
waters which line some of the Irish sea-ledges. 
Our most interesting memory is a visit to a lonely skerry 
off the Kerry coast where the sttfrmy petrels make their 
home for a few weeks in the year. The low rocks slippery 
with sea-wrack made walking unpleasant, but there was a 
vast romance in being so closely in touch with the most 
daring, most familiar, yet most mysterious of sea-travellers. 
Few are its known nesting haunts, wide its range as the 
Atlantic sweep. No storm seems to disturb its life, for 
through the wildest day one may see it in glancing flight 
here and there over the troubled waters. Yet this tiny reef, 
so far from shore that the mountains of Kerry are a mere 
haze on the horizon, is its home. The few birds, scattered 
at our coming, were lost to sight on the swelling sunlit blue 
of ocean, yet one felt that their keen eyes were watching 
our every movement, that every white egg discovered added 
specially to the alarm of one pair of the watchers. The 
nests proved to be rough constructions of weed and grass, 
generally in holes or crevices where the mother bird might 
sit undisturbed by direct sunhght. 
One has memories of soft summer surges off Tory Island 
and off primitive Achill, in many bays where sea-fishing as a 
sport (as apart from a trade) is practiced. In high July 
the birds of the shore and cUffs are at rest, for their tiny 
broods are self-dependent, and no .close attention to the 
home is requisite. There is a loui^ing spirit abroad : the 
males and' females flock separately*;- and dawdle over the sea 
where an illimitable banquet is at their service. The young 
broods, too, fly together and,'after a few days about the home 
strand or ledge, launch forth into the unknown. There are^" 
thousands of pigeons in the Sea-caves, and land-birds ot^ 
all sorts from peregrines to skylarks on the grass ledges and,;; 
among the rocks, so that the shore is not unfrequented. This 
great outward movement among the sea-birds is preparatory 
to the great migration — for most of our individual birds 
pass south with hard weather, their places being taken by 
kindred from the icy North. 
It is during September that the southward tide is in full 
flow. It is hardly strange to notice that the birds fly least 
keenly with a following wind, particularly if it be powerful and 
carry along sheets of rain. Such a boisterous assistant 
ruffles up the feathers, drives the rain to the very skin, 
' and soon the chiUed bird falls exhausted. A succession of 
strong gales from the west brings Ireland its strangest visi- 
tors — birds which in summer frequent Greenland and even 
Iceland, but which normally take a course down the American 
coast for winter. Frequently birds famihar to the swamps 
and marshes of Florida come down on the Irish coast, tired, 
amazed, pausing for a while before continuing their route 
:to the Tropics. 
October is another slack month for the Irish bird-lover ; 
but November rouses the shore and the bay to life. Knots 
and TVhimoral, scooters and divers, the sea sandpipers, 
come south in thousands together with the numerous sea 
ducks, and one turns to the sandy bays of the Eastern sea to 
welcome the coming of the wild geese. For centuries Ireland 
has been renowned as a great haunt for these, flying there 
from the Arctic Circle, from the nesting marshes round the 
Baltic. Wild .swans too wing this way, but never in great 
numbers. On the' western shore the wi nter strikes shrewdly 
in squall and storm, beating back the tiijy birds from the salt 
water, causing even the strong ones to flinch in terror and 
majesty. Donegal, ebiinemara, Kerry, each has its wild 
areas, though in the far south of the land there is less of Arctic 
rigour in the 4)i-eeze,rtand in every shelter the sub-tropical 
.palms and aloes flouiji^hje 
The Irish shore is full of contrasts such as this. The 
sterile rocks of Antrim protect some tiny vale of rich pasture : 
the great cliffjs gf Gablyapf stand boldly out against the 
Atlantic to keep in pelc#some silver-stranded bay by which 
nestles the brown village of the fisher-folk : the crags of 
Kerry fence in some such darhng of the gods as Glengarriff , 
just as the misty Reeks charm away the tragedy of winter 
from the arbutus groves of Killarney. The wild west coast 
is a contrast to the peaceful pasture lands which shelve 
toward , St. George's Channel and the Irish Sea. The song- 
birds which wing ,to Ireland for their summer quarters are 
balanced by the silent fieldfares and redwings, the discor dant 
sea-farers of the winter months. 
