her. It’s only then we notice the male, approaching her on the languid current. She slides into the water beside him, and together they make their way downstream. The light on him is less forgiving; he clings to the shadows of the opposite bank, frustrating my urge to get a decent photo of his stunning green head. But the pleasure of seeing them so close – and so unhurried – is compensation enough.
As the procession slips downstream, a second female joins the couple; the second male is nowhere to be seen. Breaking into a light jog, we follow them to the bridge, watching them pass under us. Once again, their heads are angled to keep us in view, but there is no urgency in their cruising. They’re more than happy to let the stream dictate the tempo of their journey: free birds, floating.
The amber water beneath them glistens and sparkles, as if the riverbed were studded with gold. It’s like the miners of old have foolishly left a fortune behind. And as the goosanders float over it, they pass under branch after branch, until finally they melt away into the overhanging undergrowth.
GREY PARTRIDGE
Lough Boora
The setting is rural Ireland at its most pristine. Offaly is among the flattest of Ireland’s counties, with only a distant plateau adding any bulk on the horizon. Closer to, the fields are lightly dusted with frost, the morning dew crystalised by the March chill.
In the early morning the rooks are in full voice. From the unkempt balls of twigs in which they nest high in denuded trees, they make a raucous chorus. It’s as if each bird can’t help but want to out-call its neighbour, and soon the canopy is awash with cawing. Atop a scots pine a lonely mistle thrush watches on in silence, positioned to sing but hesitant to do so, knowing its solo will be drowned out by the relentless chatter of the rookery.
Closer to the ground, more modest songbirds, which don’t feel the need to proclaim dominance by assuming a lofty position, make easier purchase on the morning soundscape with their calls. Male blackbirds are on territory, crooning in the low branches of the undergrowth. They share the stage with cock robins, orange feathers bristling with the effort of expelling their rich stream of song. Agitated, they flick from branch to branch, eager to see off any interlopers that might stake a claim to the best perch. Enshrined in menacing thorns, one of their nests sits in a stunted bush by the side of the road. The still-radiant green of the moss woven into the structure is about the only colour to be found amid the tangle of dark twigs and briars. It’s like an outpost of spring, a flag declaring to all about the farmland that after a long, cold winter, more fecund days are at hand.
Beyond, the fields spread out across the landscape. In the one closest to me four horses with heavy woollen boots graze, the sun right overhead casting long, four-legged shadows across the grass. They share the fields with a panoply of farmland birds. Hopping along the ground, the mistle thrushes and fieldfares, silver heads glistening in the morning light, frustrate my urge to pick out a distant partridge among the jackdaws, starlings and woodpigeons. Time and again I find myself squeezing a partridge into a thrush, only for the hopping motion to shatter the delusion. They share the upright stance I expect of a partridge, and the mistle thrush even has the same pot belly. But while partridges are primarily grazers, akin to avian guinea pigs, the thrushes busy themselves rooting out worms in the wet earth. They only concede to herbivorous temptation when it’s sweet-wrapped in the form of fruit.
On and on the path meanders through the fields, past a barn bursting with cattle and dung heaps sprinkled with ice. Sheep graze, docile, on one side. On the other, a limousin bull, horns blackened at the tips, glares at me as I walk past. He marches forth with purpose, placing himself between me and the cows and calves feeding behind him. For a moment, I wish there were more than a few flimsy strands of barbed wire separating us.
As the sun rises higher, the frost goes into full retreat. The barbed wire is hung with golden droplets, like bunting festooned about the farmland in celebration of spring. In its wake, the melting frost leaves its residue across the grassy fields, and they start to sparkle. They make a perfect course for hares, bounding across the fields in twos and threes every time I draw near. At times, they rock back on their hind legs to scan the surroundings. This is when their size impresses; they’re close to twice the size of the rabbits I’d mistaken them to be at a distance.
As it is for the partridges, Lough Boora and its surrounding parkland is a sanctuary for the Irish hare – the only member of its clan native to Ireland. This is one of the few places where they seem to outnumber rabbits, their invasive cousins from the continent. Rabbits are a relic from the days of the Norman adventurers, following them on their conquests across this island. But the hare has been here since at least the end of the last Ice Age, long before the first people.
Unlike rabbits, hares have a penchant for bog land, but can also thrive on farms when there are plentiful hedgerows for them to escape to. And in the now carefully managed environment at Lough Boora, conditions for them (as for the partridge) are perfect. The sheer mass of the hare doesn’t lend itself to a subterranean retreat, and so they are forced to shelter out in the open. That leaves them exposed to hunters, human or other. But at Lough Boora, the presence of predators is strictly curbed to allow the partridge to flourish undisturbed. It is this benign human interference that helps other herbivores thrive here too, an Eden where prey sneer at predators from behind the shield of man.
As I venture farther and farther along the trail, the trees vanish, and with them the long-gone caws of the rookery. Instead, the bird calls here are a blend of farm and wetland. The croak of a pheasant mingles with the pews of lapwings, and the honking of distant geese. It feels like Lough Boora cannot decide what kind of aviary it most desires to assemble, and so keeps a wide menagerie in an attempt to please all comers.
Buried within the mosaic of fields is a designated space solely for nourishing the partridge. Knowing how they thrived in pre-modern farmland, it’s not hard to see why. Crossing the threshold, you feel like you’ve set foot on a Midlands farm as it might have been long ago. The grass is long and golden brown, unchecked by ruminant or machine. The fields here are loosely demarcated, their foliage patchier; meadows, caught somewhere between the wild and tame. Blotchy legumes lend green to the scene. In spots, vestiges of the bog still manage to creep through, the sun-cooked peat crumbling like chocolate cake. Its virility pours into the spring shoots that crest across its surface, in between the patchwork of crops. Combined, they make plentiful cover for the partridge to hide in.
No surprise, then, that they’re not the first birds that catch my eyes. Lapwings, another species that thrive in the no-man’s land set aside for the partridge, fill the air with synthesised bleeps. On thick, clubbed wings that flick from dark to white, they wheel high and low over the fields, chasing others into the air, enticing them to join in the fun of it all. On the ground they strut about with rear ends held high, a stance more moth than bird. Sometimes, as I follow the trail that encloses the fields, I mistake the tapering tail of a lapwing for the extended neck of a partridge, craning to keep me in view. Overhead, skylarks make a constant murmur, wings beating ceaselessly to hold them aloft. Every now and then, amidst the gargle of notes, they happen upon a phrase they like and repeat it two or three times; an improvising musician hoping to spin a hit song from hours of fruitless exertion.
If the lapwing and skylark are aerial masters, yielding their finest performances on the wing, then the partridge is the terrestrial specialist, preferring to crawl amongst the fields than cast shadows on them from above. Flightless birds are a rarity in the northern hemisphere. In Ireland, we lost our last in 1844, the year when the world’s last great auk (a flightless cousin of the razorbill and puffin) succumbed to the rapacious hunting of scientific collectors.
The great auk was the northern hemisphere’s answer to the penguins. Most terrestrial
