Wild Shores E-Book

Richard Nairn

• Herausgeber: Gill Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Following the Irish coast in a clockwise direction, acclaimed ecologist Richard Nairn travels by boat, on foot and sometimes by air to visit the best remaining wild places, including islands, cliffs, beaches and dunes. The result is a unique mix of nature, history, science and a reflection on the author's personal experiences of exploring Ireland's coast. By viewing the Irish coastline from the sea, Richard gains a unique perspective on the island. And along the way, he recalls a lifetime spent studying nature. 'An affectionate and timely celebration of Ireland's richly varied coastline' Bryan Dobson 'A great read – whatever part of the coast you visit' Éanna Ní Lamhna 'A brilliant and timely odyssey around our precious, precarious shores' Professor John Brannigan, University College Dublin 'An exhilarating journey right around our coastline' Paddy Woodworth, Journalist and author 'An intimate, inspiring and lovely read about Ireland's shorelines: its places and spaces' Professor Robert Devoy, Lead Editor of The Coastal Atlas of Ireland

Leseprobe

WILDSHORES

THE MAGICOF IRELAND’SCOASTLINE

RICHARDNAIRN

Gill Books

For Wendy

And to the memory of my father,George E. Nairn (1920–2014)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Preface

Introduction

East Coast

South Coast

West Coast

North Coast

Crossing the Bar

Turning the Tide

References

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Author

About Gill Books

Photo Section

Preface

To most people, the coast is associated with holidays, hot summer weather, beaches, sand dunes and fun. To some, it is a place for regular sport and exercise – walking the dog, cycling on coastal paths, swimming, sailing, rowing, angling – and many other water sports. For a few, it is their workplace – fishermen, shipping crews, port workers, lighthouse staff. To me, it offers an endless range of interests – a wide diversity of wildlife, fascinating archaeology and history and remote places like islands that give a glimpse of wilderness.

My earliest memory of the sea was playing on the sand in the old stone-built harbour at Sandycove near Dún Laoghaire. My father went off to swim at the Forty Foot Bathing Place ‘for Gentlemen only’. I was much older when I learned that this was a place where men were only required to wear bathing costumes after nine o’clock in the morning.

When my earlier book Ireland’s Coastline was first published in 2005, many people asked me if their favourite place was included. I had to explain that the book was not a geographical guide but instead a general account of the ecology, history and uses of the coast. In response to these requests, I have now attempted to fill that gap. This book follows the Irish coastline from place to place, starting and ending at the north-east corner. I have explored almost all the places mentioned here either by boat or on foot. Occasionally, I have flown over them. Inevitably, my primary interests in ecology and nature conservation are discussed throughout the book, but I regularly divert into the subjects of geology, history and archaeology wherever these are relevant. Nevertheless, there are still some secret places that I have not yet reached, either because they are mostly inaccessible or because it is impossible, in one lifetime, to visit every small bay, headland and island in a tortuous coastline some 7,500 kilometres in length. The selection of places mentioned in the text is a very personal one and it is not possible to include every jewel on this endless chain.

Throughout the book, I have referred frequently to Ireland’s greatest naturalist, Robert Lloyd Praeger, who recorded, through his writings, accounts of many of these places a century earlier. Praeger was a prolific traveller and writer and he left behind an enormous legacy of scientific publications, some of them being among the first to describe in detail the flora of Ireland. My text includes many quotations from Praeger’s best known and more popular books, The Way that I Went,1Beyond Soundings2 and A Populous Solitude.3 After the first mention, these books are referenced by (WW), (BS) and (PS) respectively, to avoid repetition in the reference list. In describing Praeger’s life I have been greatly assisted by two fine biographies of the naturalist by Timothy Collins4 and Seán Lysaght.5 Praeger’s writings and adventures ‘for seven decades of robust physical health’ have been inspirational to me throughout my life and I have tried to follow in his footsteps throughout Ireland on land or on the sea.

Understanding the weather and tides makes me acutely aware of how dependent we are on the sea and gives me a unique perspective on the Irish coast. In the main chapters I follow the coastline in a clockwise direction starting in County Antrim. In the final chapter, ‘Turning the Tide’, I reflect on some current threats to the coastal environment and how these might be approached in future.

The American writer and biologist Rachel Carson summed up how fundamental the coast is to our well-being. ‘Like the sea itself, the shore fascinates us who return to it, the place of our dim ancestral beginnings. In the recurrent rhythms of tides and surf and the varied life of the tide lines there is the obvious attraction of movement and change and beauty. There is also, I am convinced, a deeper fascination born of inner meaning and significance.’

My father taught me to sail in a wooden dinghy around Dublin Bay and I have enjoyed boats all my life. I love to be out on the sea with just the wind, the waves and some good friends for company. I would like my children and grandchildren to enjoy the same privilege.

Introduction

The sun was already sinking fast over the coastal town of Wexford when I arrived at Rosslare Point on a fine summer evening fifty years ago. I had been delayed in Dublin and arrived two hours later than planned so my friend David Cabot had already crossed to the island where the terns were nesting. This was before the era of mobile phones so there was nothing for it but to borrow a small wooden rowing boat from a local man and set off across Wexford Harbour on my own. I had no fear as I had been messing about in boats since childhood and I have a strong rowing stroke. But I had underestimated the tidal currents. Twice each day a vast body of water fills and empties through the narrow mouth of Wexford Harbour and, though shallow, the currents can be faster than a river.

As I reached the centre of the channel in the fading light, I realised that I was being dragged by the tide further and further out into the Irish Sea and away from the sandy island. It crossed my mind that I had no radio or way of contacting help. My foolishness became crystal clear when I remembered that I did not even have a lifejacket. I had only a wooden boat and two heavy oars. For the first time in my life, I tasted that strange mixture of fear and respect for the power of nature. My survival was now a toss-up between the sea and my own resources. Then my years of training kicked in. Summoning all my strength and stamina, I pulled hard on the oars and turned across the tide. Fortunately, after more than an hour of exhausting rowing, the tide turned, and I was able to pull the boat up on a shelly beach and sit down to recover. Thoughts of Robinson Crusoe passed through my mind as the small island was uninhabited. I lay back on the sand and counted my blessings.

The turn of the tide is one of those immutable things in life. Like night following day, summer fading to autumn, middle age after youth, I know it will always come. I cannot stop its steady progress. It never lets me down. Ebb and flow, fall and rise, twice a day, unfailing, dependable, predictable. In a crazy, uncontrollable world, I know that, as long as the moon is in the sky, the tide will never fail. It carries my boat along or stops it in its tracks. It pushes up the beach, slowly erasing my footprints. It leaves behind rich offerings. A spiny spider crab that once crept about the deep seabed, a heap of oyster shells dredged from the sandbanks offshore or the bleached skull of a seabird that did not survive the winter.

When the tide turns against the wind direction, it pushes the sea surface up into small crests that change the motion of a sailing boat, like driving from the road onto a gravel track. Just as the wind moves the air about, tides pull and push seawater around the coast, in and out of rock pools, up and down a beach. But unlike the wind, which is invisible, unpredictable, sometimes gentle, often angry, I can see the tide as it passes, watch its steady progress, make allowances for its effects.

The turn of the tide is a wondrous thing. The constant movement of the ocean pauses for a moment, takes a deep breath, reaches its limits and starts to return the way it came. Curtains of seaweed are swept in the opposite direction, sand grains roll down the beach, and crabs scuttle into deeper water. I feel a different pull on the boat as it implores me to follow rather than resist it. The tide is my constant friend, not a threatening adversary. But I have reached this accommodation after fifty years of experience of the sea. Sitting on that beach, it seemed like the tide had granted me a narrow escape and taught me a lesson for the future.

Tern Island in Wexford Harbour was then little more than a sandy ridge with a thin covering of dune grasses but at the time it held one of the largest colonies of terns in Ireland. Five different species of these small, delicate seabirds arrived to breed here each summer from their African winter quarters. The nests were closely spaced and little more than shallow scrapes in the sand, sometimes lined with a few shells or blades of grass. My friend David, who had travelled to the island ahead of me, had invited me to help him with a long-term research project on the rare roseate tern that nested on Tern Island in greater numbers than any other place in Europe. I was thrilled to be involved with a project where I got to see the birds at close quarters. This research had a practical application for conservation, as fitting a small sample of the terns with tiny numbered leg rings in Ireland demonstrated that these migratory birds were being hunted in Africa and the population was in steep decline. Alas, a few years later, the island was completely destroyed by a series of winter storms and the terns were forced to find other breeding sites.

As a student at Trinity College Dublin, in the early 1970s, I was excited by the idea that there were wild places and species out there somewhere waiting to be discovered. I read avidly the works of the old naturalists like Robert Lloyd Praeger, hoping to re-find some remnants of the pre-industrial Ireland that they described. Praeger began The Way that I Went, his book about a life of wanderings in Ireland, with the words: ‘It is indeed a kind of thank-offering, however crude, for seven decades of robust physical health in which to walk and climb and swim and sail throughout or around the island in which I was born, to the benefit alike of body and soul.’

Praeger was seventy years old when he wrote his famous book. Over the course of my own seven decades, I have often thought of Praeger as we crossed the same paths, although he died the year after I was born. He began life near Belfast and I was born near Dublin. In his twenties, he moved to Dublin for his first permanent job while, at the same age, I moved to Northern Ireland to work. My second job was in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin where Praeger had been President fifty years earlier. In the Academy’s library, I was fortunate to be able to view the collection of Praeger’s own papers including a signed copy of his ground-breaking research, the Clare Island Survey. Although I will never match his achievements, he has been an inspiration throughout my life which has been enriched by natural history, reading and writing. But, in the near century that separated us, Ireland changed almost beyond recognition.

In my search for ‘wild’ Ireland, I was to be disappointed again and again as I travelled around most of the island. The native forest cover of Ireland had been removed thousands of years earlier. Mechanised farming and forestry had destroyed much of the wildness that Ireland contained in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The landscape was now highly modified from the seashore to the summits of the highest mountains. It seemed virtually impossible to find any places that were untouched by people and their use of the land.

But some small wild areas remained on the salt-sprayed coasts and islands and in the untamed region between the tides where the land and sea overlap. I found that these were the places to look for the best of Ireland’s wildlife. Even walking the wide beaches of Dublin Bay, within sight of the city centre, I experienced a closeness to nature and the natural energy of tides, winds and waves. Slowly, I came to accept that the long history of human activity on the coast was as much a part of our heritage as the wilder areas that seemed to have survived untouched. So for this book, I have given equal attention to the landscape, history and ecology of the coast in the hope of presenting a balanced and realistic appraisal of the most interesting places.

Seamus Heaney once described the coastline as a place where ‘things overflow the brim of the usual’. But what exactly is the coast? Many experts have tied themselves into knots trying to define what constitutes the coastal zone, although everybody knows that this is where we find beaches, waves, seaweed, shellfish and seabirds. The core of the coastal zone is the area between high and low water mark that is covered and uncovered by seawater twice each day. Inland of this are coastal lands such as sand dunes and cliffs that are strongly influenced by marine processes, while to seaward are shallow marine areas that receive sediments from rivers and recycling of beach sands.

Estimates of the length of the Irish coast vary greatly depending on whether the perimeters of every minor rock, peninsula and inlet are included. The best estimate is one based on Geographic Information Systems that arrived at a figure of 7,524 kilometres.6 Nearly half of the total length of coastline is found on the highly indented west coast between Cork and Donegal, now promoted as the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’. The counties with the longest coastlines in Ireland are Cork, Kerry, Clare, Galway, Mayo and Donegal. The largest proportion of the Irish coastline is made up of rock, sand and mud but there are substantial sections with artificial sea walls and harbours. We are essentially a maritime people, as nowhere in this island is more than 100 kilometres from the coast. In 2016 there were 1.9 million people living within five kilometres of the Irish coast, representing 40 per cent of the total population (Central Statistics Office, 2017).

I have always lived close to the coast. As a young man, my father was a naval officer and he remained involved in sailing all his life. He taught me the skills of rowing, sailing, swimming and fishing and he also gave me a love of the salt sea air and the freedom that comes with it. Since I was a child I have been sailing in all sorts of boats, from single-handers to large ocean-going yachts. I get a sense of exhilaration and anticipation when casting off from any harbour. Out on the waves I leave behind the cares and complications of everyday life, focusing just on the weather, the tide, the boat and my companions. I love to walk along the tideline on a western beach, searching the flotsam and jetsam of the oceans for unusual shells, seaweeds and the bleached white bones of dolphins. My grandfather’s house was in Sandymount, just one street away from the shoreline of south Dublin Bay. He told me that, when he dug a hole in the back garden, his spade went straight into beach sand full of seashells. My great-grandfather was an artist who lived on the northern shores of Dublin Bay, sketching and painting the sailing ships and fishing craft that visited the port in large numbers in the nineteenth century. I have saltwater in my veins and I feel uncomfortable living away from the sea.

In my college days, when I was staring out the window of the library, I dreamed of living and working in a wild place close to nature and learning first-hand how the natural world works. My first proper job, when I emerged into the sunlight after four years studying natural sciences at university, was on a nature reserve in Northern Ireland where I was appointed as one of the wardens. The place is called Murlough – a wonderful area of sand dunes with a stunning backdrop of the Mourne Mountains sweeping down to the sea. Here was the ideal opportunity and I couldn’t believe my luck. I caught the train from Dublin to Belfast and arrived at Murlough with a bag on my back and excitement in my head. This was the early 1970s and Northern Ireland was in a deep political crisis with armed conflict and increasing militarisation. Within days of my arrival, Northern Ireland was plunged into darkness as the Ulster Workers’ Council Strike closed down the main electricity-generating station. Before long, the period known as ‘The Troubles’ became just part of daily life and I got on with the work to which I had been appointed.

The accommodation was fairly spartan. I spent the first summer in an abandoned cottage with no electricity or running water, using rainwater that drained from the roof into a barrel. It was right on the edge of the estuary and I could hear the curlews and oystercatchers calling from the shoreline through the night. Early one morning, when I looked out through a cracked windowpane, I saw an otter loping along the edge of the tide stopping occasionally to leave its mark. In August that year, when an unusually high tide started to lap at the door of the cottage, I decided it was time to move on. I packed my rucksack and cycled over the sand dunes to the big house near the beach. This was owned by the Marquis of Downshire, but his lordship was not in residence. The land had recently been transferred to the National Trust and the big house now lay vacant. In an old stableyard nearby lived an elderly couple who had worked for the estate in its heyday. They kindly offered me an upstairs room in the stables as a temporary home.

With winter coming on I made myself as comfortable as possible. I found an old rusting iron bed in a shed, borrowed a mattress and a kettle and started to cut up some firewood to keep the place warm. Although I didn’t know it then, this stable was to be my home for the next five years. Despite the lack of home comforts, it was an inspiring place for a young naturalist to begin his first real job: living in the centre of a nature reserve just a hundred metres from the beach. From the draughty windows, I could hear the waves on the shore and, when the south wind blew, the calls of seals hauled out on the bar were plainly audible. This plaintive sound could be easily mistaken for mermaids singing to attract humans to their watery home. There were many other unfamiliar sounds as well. Herons roosted in the pine trees around the house and their night-time squawks would waken me from sleep. I heard the evocative calls of curlews and wild geese flying overhead. As the winter progressed the trees filled with flocks of thrushes, many of them migrants from Scandinavia or Iceland, and the calls of these birds going to roost at night will stay with me for ever.

My appetite for working and living in remote wild parts of the coast had been whetted by two main influences. I had read avidly the works of Frank Fraser Darling, who farmed a ruined croft on the deserted Isle of Tanera in the Scottish Hebrides. He was a superb naturalist and used his time in the wild to make some ground-breaking zoological studies of seabirds, seals and deer. I treasured his classic book Island Farm which was published in the 1940s on the cheap, low-quality paper that marked the war years in Britain.7 His many later books revealed his own passionate character as well as the science that drove him to these wild places. Fraser Darling went on to become a charismatic if always controversial figure in the world of international conservation. His adventures captured my imagination and I was fortunate, like him, to live and work close to nature.

While I was a warden at Murlough I was lucky to take part in several expeditions to study seabirds. On the Saltee Islands off Wexford we stayed in an old farmhouse, collecting water in buckets from the well. Health and safety were minor considerations here as the team of enthusiastic young ornithologists scrambled among the cliff ledges and boulders counting fulmars, gannets and puffins. We used a strange contraption like a giant butterfly net to swipe through the air and catch guillemots and razorbills as they were startled from their nesting ledges. These birds were caught unharmed, fitted with metal leg rings and released in the hope that they would be found again on some distant coast or, better still, by another ornithologist studying the same species. This was a formative time and it gave me a clear direction for my life.

Shortly after this, my friend David came to visit me at Murlough where I was now well settled into the stable quarters. With our telescopes we spent hours on the beach searching through the seabird flocks that gathered on the beach, looking for coloured rings that might provide a hint of their natal colony. One morning, without warning, gunfire rang out as bullets ripped through the vegetation around us. We didn’t wait to ask questions but dived back into cover leaving behind our telescopes which, in retrospect, could have been mistaken for automatic weapons. The sand dunes across the channel were used by the British Army as a training ground and the shots probably came from a young trigger-happy recruit who thought we were part of the military exercise.

Luckily, I survived these early experiences and began to enjoy life as a warden-naturalist. I learned so much in those years about natural history in coastal habitats but also about the business of managing land for conservation. I met some eminent people involved in coastal research and conservation such as Bill Carter and Palmer Newbould. Thirty years later, I wrote a book called Ireland’s Coastline, to put down on paper what I had learned and to make a plea for the nature and heritage of our maritime fringe.8 Since then, much has changed. The climate is becoming warmer each decade and this has serious implications for seawater and coastal habitats. Overfishing is having increasing impacts on the marine ecosystem. Plastic pollution of the oceans has become a major issue.

International travel restrictions in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic have forced Irish people to explore and appreciate their own beautiful country. This book is a guide to the best parts of the Irish coastline but it is a distinctly personal selection. With over 7,500 kilometres of shoreline, including all the islands and bays, to choose from, I could only pick those places that I know well and give just a sample of the richness and diversity that the Irish coastline holds. The foreshore – the land exposed when the tide drops to its lowest each day – is owned by the state in the Republic, by the Crown Estate and local authorities in Northern Ireland and by the National Trust in the case of Strangford Lough. From the vast tidal mudflats of the Shannon Estuary to the highest rocky cliffs in Europe, it is free to roam and to explore.

As Robert Lloyd Praeger wrote in his classic autobiography The Way that I Went, ‘I have done what I said I would, and roamed at random.’ I often take his book with me on my own travels to different spots around the Irish coast and consult it to see what he found there a century earlier. His memoirs are filled with vivid accounts of the landscape, its flora and fauna, historical and archaeological features, Irish placenames and, unlike most nature writing, frequent quotes from his favourite poetry. In one of his later books, A Populous Solitude, Praeger included memories of many people that he met on his travels:

I strolled downhill towards where the sound of steel on steel told of the presence of human industry and came upon a man engaged in driving a line of wedges into a granite block. Near-by lay the result of previous labour – rough six-foot squarish pillars, to be used evidently as gate-posts. On one of them a woman rested with a basket and ‘billy-can’, waiting for the completion of the work to offer him tea and food.

His penultimate book, Some Irish Naturalists, includes sixty short pen portraits of both amateur and professional natural scientists, including members of his own family, that he knew during his long life. He wrote:

I think my earliest contact with a man of science was when my grandfather, Robert Patterson, took me to Cultra on the shores of Belfast Lough to show me the Adder’s-tongue. By inclination he was a zoologist, but in those days, naturalists were not specialists, and with a wide knowledge of the animal kingdom he was also well acquainted with local plants.9

The chapters of my book that follow this introduction have been written following Praeger’s example on a rambling journey of memories around the coast of Ireland in a clockwise direction. Since my father undertook a complete circumnavigation of Ireland by yacht, I have always wanted to make a similar journey by sea. So far, however, I have only managed to sail the east and south coasts. I am lucky to have visited by land many parts of the west coast mainland and islands while I explored much of the north coast on foot. My yacht Ventosa is a 32-foot sloop with four berths. In it there is a collection of books including those of Praeger and I always find something of interest here during my travels. I have visited all the places mentioned in the text but at different times in my life and using different modes of transport. I start this journey on a yachting passage in the north-east corner of Ireland just a few short miles from Belfast Lough where Praeger began his life and his ramblings.

East Coast

Robert Lloyd Praeger was born in Holywood, County Down in 1865. He was, by all accounts, a bright child and the earliest photograph shows him at six years old reading a book while seated at an intricately carved desk. In his own words, ‘at school I was idle and inattentive; I hated schoolbooks and school-masters and made some approach to being a dunce’.(PS) He came from a stoutly Protestant tribe and, though not religious in the conventional sense, the preface to his most famous book The Way that I Went contains the line ‘Thank God for Life’. He was described as gruff in manner but a kind and gentle soul throughout his life. His father was a Dutch Presbyterian who had emigrated to Belfast in 1860, there married into the Patterson family and became involved in the linen business for which Ulster was then well-known.1 It was to his mother’s family that Robert Lloyd Praeger ascribes his early interests in natural history, through his grandfather and especially his uncle Robert Lloyd Patterson. With his sister and three brothers he wandered around the nearby Holywood Hills, exploring further and further afield as he grew.

It must have been a privileged childhood – loving parents and grandparents, a private school, all the books that he could read – and he benefitted from this in his education. After graduating from Queen’s University Belfast, he qualified as an engineer and had various short-term contracts working on construction projects in the northern counties. But all the while he was honing his skills as a naturalist and a writer. As a young man, he spent his leisure time with his brothers and friends walking and exploring the hills of Ulster, of which the Mourne Mountains were a particular favourite. Among his many adventures one stands out for its drama. Having walked all day alone from the hills of Slieve Gullion to the west he sat among the heather of the Mournes to rest and dream of his earlier life.

A distant hallo brought me to my senses. Nothing moved in the valley save a couple of distant sheep; but looking down, I saw my brother standing in the sunlight in the Gap. He had come by the mountain route from Newcastle – over the 1,900 foot col between Slieve Donard and Slieve Commedagh and on by the sheep-path along the back of Slievenaglogh. Years later, after my brother’s death, I recalled that scene – the dark rocks still in shadow, and the erect figure in front of them bathed in bright light.(PS)

Despite being fit and healthy Praeger does not appear to have had any interest in sport or other competitive games. His friend Anthony Farrington wrote, ‘Nonetheless he was athletic in the sense that he was a remarkable walker. Not many years before his death he came across an old diary which he showed to the writer. In it was a record of a walk he had taken up one of the Glens of Antrim to meet the Belfast Field Club on the plateau. He had checked his time on the milestones and the average time was less than 10 minutes per mile – one mile was done in 9 minutes.’2

Glens of Antrim

The Antrim Glens lie just a short drive to the north of Belfast and they were a favourite destination of Praeger and his brothers in their youth. These are deep valleys through the relatively level plateau of County Antrim which was formed over fifty million years ago when molten lava forced its way up from the hot centre of the Earth and cooled between the layers of rock above it. Due to the rapid cooling of the lava, it shrank and cracked, with some of it forming the hexagonal columns that are so well known today at the Giant’s Causeway. In subsequent eons, the younger rocks on top were eroded off by millions of years of ice and rain, exposing the harder volcanic basalt below.

My journey starts at the little seaside town of Cushendun just eight kilometres south of Torr Head which marks the north-eastern corner of Ireland and from which the south-west coast of Scotland is so close that the individual houses are visible on a clear day. My yacht was moored overnight in the bay just off the beach, where it was well sheltered from the western winds. It was soon after dawn when a big red sun broke above the horizon and lit up the cliffs with a touch of rouge. Praeger described Cushendun ‘with its sheltered bay and curious series of caves cut in “pudding-stones” of the Old Red Sandstone’.(WW)

With the wind rising from the north-west it was time to go, so I lifted the anchor and headed out into the Irish Sea. Sailing south, with the outline of the Scottish coast on my left side, I was passing through hundreds if not thousands of Manx shearwaters all flying north as they headed out from their breeding colonies to feed for the day. Their distinctive flap-and-glide flight behaviour marks these black-and-white seabirds out from the gulls and gannets. There is a colony of shearwaters on the Calf of Man and a much larger one on the Copeland Islands off the mouth of Belfast Lough.

From the Irish Sea I had a wonderful view of the Glens of Antrim, deep valleys cut into the edge of the basalt plateau. Looking upwards I could see the distinctive black basalt overlying a thick layer of white chalk in the cliffs looking just like the dark chocolate top on a cheesecake. Praeger walked all of these glens a century ago. He observed that ‘the basalt weathers into a heavy rich soil and the narrow, sheltered valley bottoms have much good agricultural land, though on the slopes it soon gives way to gorse and then to heather’.(WW) Praeger loved to meet and talk to local people on his travels. Of ‘the Glynns’ he writes, ‘the glensmen too are worth meeting – a fine hardy, hearty race, closely akin in descent and language to their Scottish neighbours, shrewd, friendly and hospitable’. (WW) I met a few of these hardy folk when my yacht was tied up in the harbour at Glenarm at the seaward end of one of these glens. Among them was Billy McClelland, who runs the small marina here. He told me that in an earlier life he was a deep-sea fisherman. His half-decker fishing boat was tied up just inside the harbour wall. In his youth he would often join the trawlers that fished the Clyde, just across the North Channel in south-west Scotland. Here they would have shelter from Atlantic storms whatever the wind direction. There was much intermarrying between the people of Antrim and south-west Scotland and they still share similar words in their dialects. Today, Billy is content to welcome visiting yachtsmen to his home county of Antrim.

During the 18th and early 19th centuries, Glenarm grew from a small estate village into an important port, exporting great volumes of chalk, iron ore, timber and fish to markets in Scotland and beyond. By 1908 steamships were loading 700 tonnes of iron ore here each week. The sailing ships used were mainly schooners crewed by three men and a boy. From the 1920s these were replaced by small steamships, with up to five of these boats tied up in the harbour at one time loading stone and several more at anchor outside awaiting their turn.

Leaving Glenarm, my friend John and I set sail on a south-east heading with the target of some tiny islands eight kilometres offshore. The Maidens, or Hulin Rocks, are a small group of skerries with a lighthouse on each of the two largest islets. For most of the 19th century, both lighthouses were operational. However, in 1903 the West Maiden was abandoned and the current lighthouse on the East Maiden has been the sole light ever since. Bill Long wrote about the lighthouse keepers and their families who lived here over a century and a half. He imagined all the men, women and children living in the cramped quarters on a tiny patch of land that was often covered by waves. ‘There was no room there for the children to run or play or even hide.’3 Landing here is difficult even in calm weather, and when sea conditions were rough the keepers were often isolated for weeks on end. The Maidens Lighthouse was automated in 1977 and the keepers left the islands for the last time.

There are old records of birds found here by Charles Patten, who published a series of short notes on migrants recorded at the lighthouse during the years of the First World War. These included waders such as redshank and lapwing, songbirds such as mistle thrush, redwing and wheatear and even the tiny wren and quail. Patten was born in Dublin and studied at Trinity College but was appointed Professor of Anatomy at Sheffield University at the early age of thirty-one. Despite this he carried on a series of ornithological studies in Ireland right up to his death in 1948.4 From the previous century it was known that migrant birds were attracted by the powerful beams of lighthouses at night and often died when striking the structures. He wrote in 1914:

On Tuesday night, March 31st, Redwings and Fieldfares appeared in large numbers very close round the lantern. Very few actually collided with the glass and when they did so, generally glanced obliquely or, after striking, backed away for a foot or so and then bumped against the glass repeating this performance several times before leaving altogether. At 12.20 a.m. I picked up a Redwing and at 1 a.m. a Fieldfare. Both these birds struck the glass and fell wounded on the balcony.5

Usually, it was the lightkeepers who collected the dead specimens and posted them to Patten for identification. Given its location between Ireland and Scotland, there would have been a stream of migrant birds passing the lighthouse in spring and autumn, and this almost certainly continues to the present.

The waters around the rocks are very deep, with 180 metres the maximum recorded on my depth sounder. I saw a few storm petrels flitting about at the calm water surface around the islands. These dainty seabirds, about the size of a thrush, are true oceanic birds that only come to land for a short time each summer to breed. Their Irish populations are poorly known, because they nest in crevices in rocks and stone walls and are very difficult to census. Since being abandoned, the West Maiden Rock has become home to a small seabird colony of shags, great black-backed gulls and black guillemots (tysties). Considering their age and the rigours of a century of storms, the old buildings here are in remarkably good condition, and some birds have been nesting inside since the old lighthouse was abandoned. A century’s worth of rotten fish and seabird guano (droppings) creates quite a unique, pungent aroma.

Larne

The shortest ferry crossing of the Irish Sea to Cairnryan in Scotland starts in Larne Lough, County Antrim, a sheltered inlet which is almost completely land-locked except for the narrow entrance at the northern end. About halfway between the busy Port of Larne to the north and the shallow estuary to the south are two tiny islands. The smaller of these, Swan Island, is a natural feature comprised of boulder clay, stone and shell material, while the larger island is an artificial construction. As far back as the 1970s, when I was working as a nature reserve warden in Northern Ireland, the project to construct the second island was started by the Blue Circle company, which operated a nearby quarry at Magheramorne. Working with the advice of the late Dinah Browne, then Director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) in Northern Ireland, the company used locally available materials, basalt stone, seabed dredgings and kiln dust to build up an island about half the size of a football pitch.

Following construction, the first breeding seabirds on Blue Circle Island were a handful of black-headed gulls. In 1994, the RSPB took on a lease of the island and shortly afterwards, Ireland’s first recorded breeding Mediterranean gulls nested there. By 2016 there was a staggering total of nearly 4,300 pairs of seabirds breeding on the artificial island, including the largest individual colony of black-headed gulls and the second-largest colony of sandwich terns in Ireland. The guano produced by the seabirds over the years has now resulted in a lush vegetation, mainly couch grass, which has caused a reduction in numbers of common terns due to decreasing areas of open ground. Ongoing management by RSPB is aimed at recreating the open areas to benefit the terns. Almost fifty years after its inception, the restoration of Blue Circle lsland was completed in 2018 to give more space for breeding seabirds. Shane Wolsey, formerly Northern Ireland Officer of the British Trust for Ornithology, says, ‘this is a timely conservation project, needed to maintain the structure of Blue Circle Island’. This small site is already a key link in the network of managed sites for threatened terns in Ireland.

Leaving Larne Lough, we sailed close by the cliff-bound Isle of Muck, which lies just off the Antrim coast. The island probably gets its curious name from the Irish word muc, meaning pig, which may be because the island was linked with the high number of sightings in this area of the harbour porpoise, known in Irish as muc mhara (sea pig). This cetacean sometimes gives a snort just like a pig on surfacing. This impressive island nature reserve, in the care of Ulster Wildlife, contains the third-largest colony of cliff-nesting seabirds in Northern Ireland. Kittiwake, guillemot, fulmar and razorbill all breed here, and peregrines commonly hunt over the island. Most of the Irish gull species are present and the number of common gull nests has been growing steadily in recent years. The populations of breeding seabirds on the island are part of a larger colony that also uses mainland cliffs at the Gobbins.

The Isle of Muck has recently been colonised by eiders. These large ducks are mainly found in arctic waters, but the population also spreads south around the Irish coasts. In the breeding season they make a long ‘ooooing’ call that echoes across the water. They build deep nests using soft down plucked from their own body (this was traditionally collected for filling eiderdown quilts). But these ground-nesting ducks are very vulnerable to mammal predators and the Isle of Muck was infested with brown rats which had probably made the crossing via the spit that joins the island to the mainland at low tide. The productivity of fulmars on the island was among the lowest in Northern Island, as many eggs and chicks were taken by the rats. A rat-control programme was set up by Ulster Wildlife in late 2017 using a grid of bait traps with rodenticide and sardine oil. This has to be repeated each year until monitoring shows no further rats present. However, they always make their way back gradually from the mainland. Black guillemots, which nest in rock cavities, seem to have benefitted from the absence of rats here, as they have recently increased to over sixty birds. Extensive bracken control has also been completed and grazing by hardy sheep introduced to maintain the open habitats needed by breeding seabirds.

Sailing along below the basalt cliffs, I could see Black Head Lighthouse and the remarkable coastal path known as the Gobbins. Hanging from basalt cliffs directly over the Irish Sea, the Gobbins cliff path was a popular curiosity during the Edwardian period. Designed in 1902, the path was part of the vision of Berkeley Deane Wise, Chief Engineer of the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway Company, to use the recently expanded railway network to attract visitors to this spectacular part of Ireland. With the arrival of the steam train in the 19th century it became possible for the first time for ordinary people to move about the country. Not only did the railways serve cities like Belfast which were then industrial powerhouses, but they opened up remote beauty spots to a new kind of industry – tourism. In the early 20th century, the old path at the Gobbins was a fee-paying visitor attraction. Each day in the summer season ticket collectors, like retired railwayman Sam Cuthbert, sat in front of an arch cut through the rock which was called Wise’s Eye after Berkeley Deane Wise. If you had come by train, he would check your railway ticket. If you came under your own steam, you paid a fee. A gate across Wise’s Eye kept people off the old path out of hours.

Praeger was a regular visitor to this part of the Antrim coast, which was a short train ride from his home outside Belfast. Aged 20, he wrote in 1885:

The first time I paid my respects to Black Head was on a calm evening in August, when my younger brother and I, having an hour to spare before train time, thought we would go round the base of the cliffs, as it was low water. We got on very well for a while, scrambling over rocks and boulders, and occasionally wading round a projecting point; but presently we came to a deep gully, about 15 feet wide, which ran up into a large cave in the cliff, at the upper end of which the waves were breaking with a hollow roar. However, we got over this obstacle by placing stones in the pockets of our clothes and throwing them across, and then swimming after them. Going on we soon came upon another gully similar to the first, when we repeated the performance. Again proceeding, we came to a third, and before we got clear of the cliffs we had had four or five swims, which, as each involved at least a partial dressing and undressing, detained us considerably longer than we had time to spare, and we missed our train; luckily it was not the last one.6

The Gobbins closed in 1954 due to the Great Depression of the 1930s and lack of materials after the Second World War. However, after extensive renovations, the Gobbins was opened again recently as a tourist attraction along the Causeway Coastal Route. It comprises a series of steel bridges along the cliffs, through rock arches, across wave-cut gullies and over cave entrances. While tied up in Larne I walked the five-kilometre route and was amazed by the power of the sea below. I was mesmerised standing on steel bridges above the churning waves, running my hand along the cool stone of the cliff face and enjoying closeup views of many sea birds.

Belfast Lough

A century and a half after Praeger grew up on the shores of Belfast Lough, I made a return visit to the area around the city’s busy port, although I had known it well during my time in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. In the 19th and early 20th centuries this was a place of bustling industry. The famous Harland and Wolff shipyards were the site for the building of some of the largest vessels of their time, including the ill-fated Titanic. This time I wanted to see how wildlife was surviving within the port, with all its noise, lights and industrial activity. Belfast Lough Reserve is made up of four sites – Belfast’s ‘Window on Wildlife’, Harbour Meadows, Holywood Banks and Whitehouse Lagoon – all of which are special places for nature. These sites are all managed by the RSPB as refuges for birds and other wildlife in the urban environment.

Belfast Harbour Estate can trace its origins back to 1613, during the reign of James I, when a quay was constructed where the River Farset and River Lagan met and the development of Belfast as a port city began. Fast forward to the 1970s, when silt was dredged from shipping channels to allow a more suitable depth in which modern ships could operate. This was pumped ashore, where it settled and hardened with large pools of water – the perfect spot to stop and feed for migrant birds flying overhead. The conservation potential of this site was quickly recognised, and it was designated as a nature reserve in 1998. More than a hundred bird species have now been recorded at the site, from arctic terns to bar-tailed godwits, and the occasional rare visitor is seen from time to time too.

The lagoon at Belfast Harbour is managed for wintering waders and wildfowl, including redshank, oystercatcher and wigeon. The work of the RSPB wardens includes maintaining water levels, mowing grassland and cutting back invasive plants. Water levels in the lagoon here are carefully managed to create the right habitat for all the species that make their homes here. Artificial floating islands give common and arctic terns a safe place to breed. By managing the reedbed the RSPB encourages lots of insects, a valuable food source for species like the sedge warbler, which migrates from Africa in the summer. The resident Konik ponies graze the reserve, creating ideal conditions for wintering wildfowl and ground-nesting birds like lapwing.

I went into the state-of-the art visitor centre which overlooks the reserve and doubles as a birdwatching hide. Major renovations of this centre now give better views of the wildlife on the reserve. I was able to use binoculars and telescopes provided by friendly volunteers who were on hand to help. Other features built to accommodate breeding birds include a sand martin bank and a swift tower. Meanwhile two new hides, which have been constructed from shipping containers to tie in with their surroundings, offer different perspectives on the reserve.

Holywood Banks are among the last remaining mudflats of the many which once surrounded Belfast Lough but have since been filled in. The surviving mudflats are an important habitat for migrating birds like curlew and oystercatcher, which stop here to feed on the long journeys to and from their northern breeding grounds. The RSPB wardens also manage the nearby mudflats at Whitehouse Lagoon for wintering wildfowl and waders, and are working to safeguard both from illegal bait digging and fly-tipping. When the tide goes out Whitehouse Lagoon becomes crowded with wading birds like black-tailed godwits, as they probe the mud in search of food. When the tide comes in many of the birds move across the lough to the Belfast Harbour lagoons.

Bangor Harbour

At the south-eastern end of Belfast Lough lies the seaside town and large harbour of Bangor, County Down. This has been a refuge from storms for me on several occasions, and I am always happy to see it from the sea. A few years ago, I was sailing on this coast with my friend Brian when a storm blew up and the Irish Sea became very choppy. As it turned out, our yacht was tied up in Bangor for three days waiting for the storm to abate so I got to know the harbour well. Walking up the pontoons to the harbour wall I was greeted by the high-pitched calling of black guillemots which seemed to be everywhere. Known as ‘tysties’ here, as they are in Scotland, this name probably derives from an Old Norse word, beisti, brought to Ireland by the Vikings. These small seabirds have a very distinctive black-and-white plumage and bright-red feet set well back on the body. They are relatives of the puffin and, like them, nest in dark cavities, where they lay a single egg. In many harbours around the Irish coast the birds find suitable holes in old quay walls and jetties that mimic the rocky cavities they use in natural cliff sites. Julian Greenwood, then a lecturer in biology at Stranmillis College in Belfast, began to study the birds at Bangor in 1985. Julian happened to live in the town of Bangor, so it was easy for him to walk regularly around the harbour and check how ‘his’ birds were doing.

Black guillemots began nesting in the old North Pier at Bangor in 1911, using small crevices in the decaying wood and concrete structures. By the mid-20th century, there were probably no more than about six pairs. In the late 1970s the harbour authorities decided to rebuild the old North Pier and add new concrete quays for the fishing boats. This destroyed a number of nest holes used by the birds, but Julian persuaded them to install new wooden nest boxes under the piers and to experiment with adding short lengths of plastic pipe strapped to the vertical sides of the walls.7 The guillemots took to these new nest sites with enthusiasm, and from then on the population in the harbour grew till it reached a total of thirty-eight pairs in 2013. The birds are very faithful to their individual nest boxes, returning each year to breed.8 While the population here is in a very healthy state, the breeding success has dipped slightly, and there is some evidence that this may be linked to long-term increases in sea temperature, which may affect their main prey species – the butterfish.

The birds had become such a feature of the harbour, seemingly undisturbed by the frequent movements of boats and crews, that Bangor Marina adopted the dapper black guillemot as its logo. Across the road is the Guillemot Café. By now the sailors and the people of Bangor know these birds well and understand the need for their conservation. Sadly, Julian died in 2017 after thirty-two years studying black guillemots (reported in seventeen scientific papers and popular articles), but his legacy lives on, as he pioneered the methods of conservation for this species and ensured its future here. Shane Wolsey says, ‘Julian’s study and conservation of black guillemots at Bangor, County Down, exemplified his personal belief in the value of long-term studies and environmental monitoring that help us understand the natural environment. If only we could have more people with Julian’s foresight and commitment.’

With time to spare, I walked a short distance to the east to visit the village of Groomsport. This was partly because my grandparents lived here a century earlier and I wanted to find out more about this branch of my family. I had hoped to check the local church records, but these were not available. Instead, I walked down to the small harbour nearby. In the 1840s this port was home to a small fishing fleet of nearly twenty vessels and eighty fishermen. There was probably a big seasonal influx of Scottish and Isle of Man fishing boats following the herring shoals down the Irish Sea. The villagers were mainly employed in farming, fishing and loom weaving, with women finding work in linen embroidery, locally known as ‘sprigging’. As early as the 17th century, a line of small cottages called Cockle Row was built here, perpendicular to the sea, to protect the occupants from the strong north wind off Belfast Lough. My attention was drawn by the loud calls of seabirds on Cockle Island, a small island in the harbour that is particularly important for breeding terns. Between 150 and 200 pairs of arctic tern breed there, with a smaller number of common terns and a large colony of up to 500 pairs of sandwich terns. I went into one of the cottages on the harbour which has been set up as a Seabird Centre by the British Trust for Ornithology. Live images from several cameras on the island are beamed to screens in the Centre which give a unique opportunity to study the family life of the terns.

Leaving the safety of Bangor Harbour, we sailed east to the sound between Donaghadee and the Copeland Islands, through which the tide accelerates. The smaller two of the three islands are known as Lighthouse Island and Mew Island, but this is confusing at first, as the modern lighthouse is located on the latter. The original stone lighthouse was built on the former island in 1796 but this was demolished and a new lighthouse tower opened on Mew Island in 1884.9 Praeger wrote: