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:
I remember as a boy charging boldly down on the Copelands amid swirling tides and wreaths of fog; finding Mew Island more by accident than by design, and visiting its wonderful tern colonies; and how thankful we were when tide-rips and mist were safely left behind.(BS)
The old lighthouse buildings now house the Copeland Bird Observatory, established in 1954 and one of only two continuously manned bird migration watch points on the island of Ireland.10 Lighthouse Island has a cliff on the east side and fairly gentle slopes elsewhere leading to a rocky shoreline. For most of the visiting season, the island is covered by lush vegetation, including elder scrub, bracken, Himalayan balsam, nettles, bluebells, narcissi and sea campion. The observatory, which is run by volunteers, is the only place in Northern Ireland where rare songbirds are recorded with any regularity. I landed there some years ago and walked around the island taking a look at the big walk-in wire mesh cages, named Heligoland traps after the site in Germany where they were first used. Here, under licence, some migrant birds become trapped. Visitors can participate in the trapping, ringing and release of the birds and get a chance to see them at close quarters. The island also has a colony of almost 5,000 Manx shearwaters nesting in thousands of burrows below ground level. These are very long-lived birds (the oldest recorded at 55 years of age) and some marked individuals have been recovered off the coast of South America in winter. I had already seen streams of these birds flying north from their feeding grounds. Apart from the birds, the observatory is available as an ecological study centre, and is a valuable educational resource for students. There is accommodation for overnight visitors in the converted ruins of the old lighthouse.
Strangford Lough
The eastern coast of the Ards Peninsula is a relatively low rocky shore with many offshore rocks and shallows, a graveyard for sailing ships lacking accurate charts. About two-thirds of the way along its length is the tower of the old South Rocks light, completed in 1797 and still in good order. However, because it was really in the wrong place, the light was removed from the tower in 1877 and was replaced by a light ship two miles further out. In turn, this has now been replaced by a buoy. Rounding Ballyquinten Point, I was anticipating a rough ride across the mouth of Strangford Lough as the falling tide met the southerly winds blowing up the Irish Sea. But all was well, as the tide had not yet turned and was still flowing strongly into the lough. Strangford is effectively an inland sea over 30 kilometres from end to end, and with about 150 square kilometres of water surface. Twice each day powerful tidal currents flow in and out through the narrow entrance to this huge body of water. Bob Brown, formerly Head Warden for the National Trust here, wrote a wonderful description of the tide entering the lough:
In the Narrows, running between Strangford and Portaferry, cut deep into the contorted Silurian bedrocks, a massive surge of water flows with every turn of the tide. A restless and uneasy combination of currents, whirlpools, upwellings and powerful back-eddies, it streams along, relentlessly tugging boats off course, carrying seals and dead branches in its flow; a powerful reminder that, in spite of being so land-locked, the Lough is very much part of the Irish Sea.11
I have passed through this remarkable channel several times under both sail and motor. One of the most extraordinary features here is a whirlpool called the Routen Wheel, where an upwelling of fast-moving water surges out over the surrounding sea, creating a smooth surface but swirling currents underwater that grab at the rudder and swing the boat off its course. The regular car ferry across the Narrows has to make a wide curve to compensate for the tidal surge, which reaches speeds of over seven knots (about thirteen kilometres per hour). Bob Brown told me that he and a companion once dived to the bottom of the Routen Wheel – in slack water, of course. They were very impressed by the seabed here, with massive boulders or rock outcrops and patches of very clean, coarse sand, almost like weathered coral. The rocks were smothered in millions of tiny hydroids, filter-feeding on plankton in the strong current. Slack water only lasts a few minutes, and eventually the divers were swept away, surfacing about a mile south to be collected by their dive boat.
Once safely inside the lough our relief was palpable as the currents spread out and slowed down over shallower waters. The sight that greeted me was a confusing contortion of 240 kilometres of shoreline dotted with about 120 islands and many more intertidal rocks, reefs and pladdies (a local name for shallow areas that dry at low tide). Sam Hanna Bell gave this description in his classic novel December Bride:
Impeded by hundreds of islands, the waves never mounted to the fury of those of the sea, the menace lying in the currents that raced through the passages between island and island. The punt was now crawling across such a passage and approaching the deep channel where a swift racing band of water, broken and wind-blown, raised itself like the ruff of an angry dog. Then, as they neared mid-channel, Sarah felt a sudden exhilaration and a surge of kinship and love for her three companions. Her fear was subdued and lost in this feeling of kinship, of nearness to men who recognised the danger, accepted it, and were battling with it.12
The lough also has a wide range of marine habitats, from rocky shores with fast-flowing water at the mouth to huge tidal mudflats at the north end. Most of the islands are made of sand, shingle or gravel dumped here by the last glaciation 15,000 years ago. As an outdoor laboratory the lough is unsurpassed, as it contains representatives of the majority of inshore subtidal habitats found in Britain and Ireland. Equally, the marine life of the lough is rich and varied, with thousands of species, many of them very beautiful. Some twenty-eight of Strangford’s species are unknown elsewhere on the Ulster coast. In Portaferry on the eastern shore of the Narrows, I called in to visit the Marine Biology Station run by Queen’s University Belfast. I had been here in the 1970s and was pleased to see that it was still being used by generations of biology students, while many other marine laboratories in Britain and Ireland have closed.
One of the rarest and most important habitats lies in deep water not far inside the Narrows. It has been created by large horse mussels that grow on the seabed here, creating a complex structure that is home to a bewildering range of animals, something like a coral reef community in tropical waters. A scuba diver as well as a respected conservationist, Bob Brown says ‘in some areas it was impossible to see the bottom because of the tangled carpet of animal life’. Dense beds of mussels, forests of brittle stars, meadows of anemones have all attracted his attention over the years. Despite being a marine nature reserve, scallop dredging here destroyed large swathes of seabed habitat dominated by the biologically diverse horse mussel community. Bob says, ‘destruction of the habitat of a species important to a commercial fishery must surely represent one of the most short-sighted actions to be undertaken by any industry. I still steam up when I think about it.’
Even the muddy areas at the north of the lough are packed with armies of burrowing worms and shellfish. The lough is a nursery area for a wide variety of fish and its birdlife is exceptional by any standards. In early autumn the vast majority of the world’s population of light-bellied brent geese fly into the northern part of Strangford from their arctic breeding grounds to feast on the abundant seagrass beds. Large, noisy colonies of five species of terns nest on the numerous islands in summer. Praeger wrote:
Memories come of low, gravelly islands in Strangford Lough, in June alive with nesting birds. One sailed from islet to islet, to be met at each by the shrieks of a white cloud of terns, the clamour of gulls, the sharp cry of the oyster-catcher. The fringe of grass-wrack that marks storm-level would be so thickly sown with eggs that one had to pick one’s steps … and all around were the waveless waters of the land-locked lough, reflecting the fertile undulating fields of Down.(BS)
While I was a nature reserve warden in Northern Ireland, I became interested in the group of harbour seals that hauled out on the sand banks near my house. I could hear their plaintive cries on the sea wind and I found their behaviour fascinating. The harbour seal is the smaller of the two species breeding in Irish waters and, with colleagues, we found one of the biggest colonies of these seals at the time in Ireland in the sheltered waters of Strangford Lough. The numbers here reached 800 in the late 1980s. Then a disease hit them and the population collapsed.13 The pups are born in June and July, and they stay close to their mothers for weeks after this, sometimes suckling in the water, even riding on their mothers’ backs. The behaviour changes during the year, with increasing time each day spent hauled out of the water while the seals are moulting their thick coats in late summer. Grey seals also breed in Strangford Lough and, while their numbers collapsed too in the early years of this century, they are now thankfully increasing again.
The human story of Strangford is equally fascinating, from the days of the Viking ships to the present popularity of these sheltered waters for sailing and other water sports. At Nendrum on Mahee Island an early Christian monastery contained a unique form of renewable power. Excavations on the shoreline here found the remains of a horizontal mill that was built into a stone embankment designed to trap the waters from the lough. As the tide fell outside, water cascaded over the mill wheel, providing endless energy for grinding corn. Timber within the structure has been dated to 620 AD, making it one of Europe’s earliest examples of the use of tidal power.14
South Down Coast
Leaving Strangford Lough, we sailed past the headland of Killard Point, Gun’s Island and Sheepland, scene of the Amitie shipwreck of 1797. This was an attempt by France to assist the United Irishmen by landing a consignment of guns. There may be a link between this and the name Gun’s Island, although the sites are about a mile apart.15 After a long day at sea, we were happy to reach the sheltered harbour of Ardglass. The marina for visiting yachts here consists of just three pontoons and, despite its small size, it is among the best-run facilities of its kind in the country. Fred Curran and his dog have been managing this small marina since the 1990s. It is tucked into a corner of the harbour that also holds one of Northern Ireland’s main fishing ports. Sleeping on a yacht on the marina can be a little difficult with the continual background rumble of the engines of a dozen fishing trawlers heading out at five o’clock in the morning. However, there is some compensation in the natural sounds of grey seals yawning, herons screeching, whimbrels and curlews whistling. Praeger described Ardglass in the 1930s as ‘a busy centre of the herring fishery and, being a breezy and picturesque place’.(WW) At certain times of year, in the late 19th century, there would have been hundreds of wooden sailing boats tied up in the harbour here as bands of migrant herring fishermen from Scotland, England and the Isle of Man chased the huge shoals of ‘silver darlings’ in the Irish Sea.
I always take extra care leaving Ardglass through the narrow channel to the Irish Sea, as a friend of mine ran his boat over an unmarked rope from a lobster pot here and the resulting tangle around the propeller nearly caused a shipwreck. Just to the south-west is the distinctive yellow-and-black lighthouse on St John’s Point. The playwright Brendan Behan was an assistant here about 1950, and the principal keeper, Mr Blakely, had to get him sacked for slovenly behaviour, absence without leave, foul language and worse.
On this coast, the southerly flow of the tide entering the Irish Sea past Antrim slows down as it meets the northbound flow of tide from St George’s Channel to the south of Wexford. Running from St John’s Point to the Isle of Man is the Irish Sea Front, where warmer surface layers flow over deep, colder waters, creating a circular gyre in some seasons. The other large front off Northern Ireland runs from Malin Head in north Donegal to Islay in Scotland, and across which there is a marked temperature change. This temperature difference in the seawater affects marine invertebrates such as the thick-shelled topshell, which is abundant to the west of Malin Head but scarce further east until it occurs again to the south of the Irish Sea Front. These fronts are places where the upwelling of plankton attracts giant basking sharks to feed. There are particular concentrations of these impressive fish around Malin Head and near the Isle of Man.16
West of St John’s Point, the coast opens out into the wide, shallow waters of Dundrum Bay dominated by the rounded slopes of the Mourne Mountains. Here the passenger ship Great Britain, designed by the famous engineer Brunel, was bound for New York in 1846 when she went aground near Tyrella, a few miles to the west of St John’s Point, due to a navigational error. At Brunel’s suggestion a massive breakwater was erected to protect her and, almost a year later, she was refloated and recommenced her career. She is now a floating museum in Bristol.
Dundrum Bay
From the summit of Slieve Donard, the Mountains of Mourne ‘sweep down to the sea’ and the long sand dune system at Dundrum Bay where I began my trade as a field naturalist. As I related in the introduction to this book, I arrived on the dunes at Murlough Nature Reserve quite unexpectedly in the early 1970s, fresh out of university. It was, as now, a stunningly beautiful environment for a young graduate to put into practice some of the natural science that had been absorbed in lectures and practical classes. Originally owned by the Marquis of Downshire, the estate had been acquired in the 1960s by the National Trust for Northern Ireland. I was the second warden to be appointed to the staff and it was to influence the rest of my life.
The dunes form a long spit that stretches out parallel to the coast from the town of Newcastle and is separated from the village of Dundrum by a small estuary and a narrow channel through which the tide rushes twice each day. During the Second World War, these sand dunes were used for military training, and occasional remnants of concrete and steel still remain from those days. The beach here must have also been important for training, as it was similar to those beaches invaded in the Normandy landings of 1944. Jo Whatmough, the first warden at Murlough, now thinks that rabbit farming or ‘warrening’ was of immense importance in the past land-use history of the dunes. It had probably started on the dunes by the 13th century, following the construction of a Norman Castle nearby, and descriptions of the dunes as the Greater Rabbit Warren in the 18th and 19th centuries refer to the area as a ‘sandy waste’.
However, during the 1950s, the disease myxomatosis decimated Ireland’s rabbit population, and the natural dune vegetation began to recover. When the National Trust took over in the 1960s the priority was to reduce erosion caused by increasing recreational use of the dunes and beach. These ideas have changed over the decades, and there is now a view that instability is a natural feature in sand dunes, and certain scarce species such as orchids and some winter annual plants depend on the absence of competition from more vigorous vegetation.
One of the unique features of the Murlough dunes is the full sequence of habitats, from shoreline and foredunes through fixed dunes to dune heath and woodland on the oldest and most stable part of the system. Dry, stable sand dunes change over thousands of years, becoming more acidic as the lime is leached from the soil by rain. The first stage is a dense growth of bracken and burnet rose, which is replaced by heathland as the acidity increases. Here the vegetation is dominated by ling and bell heather, with typical mountainy plants such as tormentil, heath bedstraw and a selection of acidic mosses and lichens.17
However, this natural succession has been somewhat disrupted by an introduced shrub, sea buckthorn, which was planted here over a century ago in an attempt to stabilise mobile sand. In the 1970s, control and removal of the dense thickets of this plant were among the main jobs of the wardens. Jo Whatmough started work here as a National Trust warden in 1967. Now retired, she still gives volunteer help and advice on the reserve. She remembers that, when she started work first, she had a largely free hand to manage this important site for conservation. It was a case of learning by doing, as she developed new techniques such as the use of wooden boardwalks for visitors to reach the beach without causing further damage to dune vegetation. The path network is now estimated to carry over 250,000 visitors per year.
I was curious to find out how the priorities have changed over the near half-century since I started work here. The present National Trust warden, Patrick Lynch, took me on a tour of the dunes in early summer. One striking change since my time here is the openness of the dune vegetation. Large areas have been cleared of invasive sea buckthorn, and the sycamore woodland that followed it has also been felled and removed. Heather-dominated vegetation has become more widespread and rabbits were even reintroduced to try to restore some dynamism to the dune vegetation. A herd of Exmoor ponies was brought here in the 1990s from a local rare-breeds farm. They have had dramatic effects in reducing the height of the grassy vegetation, controlling the spread of bracken and preventing gorse scrub from overrunning the dunes. Jo explained: ‘This breed was chosen as they were considered to be the best for grazing of heathland in particular. They tend not to damage the heather but they eat the young tips of gorse. This seemed to be important for them during the long summer drought of 2018.’
However, Patrick’s experience in managing this beautiful coastal site is much more strictly controlled now by the fact that the reserve is designated as a European Special Area of Conservation. This has brought more regulations on which habitats must be protected and the ways in which they can be managed. Together we walked across the dunes to the beach with its iconic view of the Mourne Mountains. The sea has brought dramatic changes to the front line of dunes above the beach, with massive erosion causing slumping and then revegetation of the sand by marram grass. But, as Patrick explained, this has freed up the sand to move naturally between beach and dunes, allowing a much more natural evolution of the system.
I was impressed by how nature conservation policies and priorities can change over time. The value of practical management only becomes evident in the long term, as nature adapts to new situations such as natural pressures from the sea and from grazing animals. The natural cycles of erosion and accretion often balance each other if they are only given time and space to do so. However, after half a century of dedication to this project, Jo Whatmough is more pessimistic about the future of the natural habitats here. ‘I wish I could claim that the conservation of the wonderful habitats of dune grasslands as well as dune heath, had been successful. Although habitats on the site are now seen as of European importance, many of those that were here when I arrived in 1967 are much reduced, some even no longer present.’ With the benefit of hindsight, she can see that there are much greater forces at work here, including the effects of long-term climate change.
Mourne Country
The Mourne Coast from Newcastle to Kilkeel includes the mouth of the Bloody Bridge River and the Brandy Pad leading up and across the saddle near Slieve Donard. The car park here is a great vantage point from which to see passing harbour porpoises. The river gullies that flow down from the Mourne Mountains have fine examples of natural vegetation that is totally uncultivated. The intimate little harbour of Annalong has a fine restored water mill, from the 19th century or earlier. Here there is a beautiful species called the oysterplant that I once found on the shingle beach nearby. This is a rare northern flower that survives only in a few exposed northern locations in Ireland. It grows alongside the yellow horned-poppy, which is here at the northern edge of its range.
This area was the subject of a classic book entitled Mourne Country by Estyn Evans, Professor of Geography at Queen’s University Belfast. Evans was a Welshman and friend of Praeger, to whom he dedicated his book. He described this isolated peninsula between the mountains and the sea as the ‘Kingdom of Mourne’, with its special folk traditions, fishing and farming practices.
Whether seen from the sea, the air or from a distant viewpoint to the north, the Mountains of Mourne are a remarkably compact and clean-cut range. From Newcastle to Rostrevor, where they tumble into the sea in Dundrum Bay and Carlingford Lough the distance in a straight line is 14 miles. You can walk this in a summer’s day and, if you keep to the peaks in ‘the back side’, away from the sea, you need never drop below 1,200 feet on the way.18
Indeed, on a clear day I have often seen the distinctive outline of the Mournes when standing on the summit of Howth Head some 125 kilometres to the south.
Just past the fishing port of Kilkeel is the navigation mark known as the Hellyhunter that marks the entrance to the shipping channel for Carlingford Lough. I sometimes pause here and reel out a fishing line as it is a good place for mackerel in the summer. There is nothing more delicious than a couple of fresh fish sizzling on the pan as my yacht enters the narrow waters at the mouth of the lough. This is a classic fjord, one of just two in the island of Ireland, with a shallow rocky entrance and deep waters inside. It was described by Gerard Boate in his Natural History of Ireland, first published in French in 1666.
This haven is some three or four miles long, and nigh of the same breadth, being everywhere very deep, so as the biggest ships may come there to anchor; and so inviron’d with high land and mountains on all sides, that the ships do lye defended off all winds; so that this would be one of the best havens of the world, if it were not for the difficulty and danger of the entrance, the mouth being full of rocks, both blind ones and others, betwixt which the passages are very narrow; whereby it cometh that this harbour is very little frequented by any large ships.
Despite this warning, the shipping channel today is well marked with red and green buoys where it passes between the villages of Greencastle to the north and Greenore to the south. Carlingford Lough is divided down the middle by the international border between north and south. Many years ago, while censusing seals here with a team of biologists, our inflatable boats were ‘buzzed’ from the sky by a British Army helicopter as this was during the Troubles, when there was a heavy military presence along the border. Luckily, we were able to communicate with the aircrew by VHF radio and we stated our innocent intentions.
Further into the lough is the large harbour of Carlingford nestled beneath the Cooley Mountains and dominated by an impressive castle. Built in the 12th century by the Norman knight Hugh de Lacy, the building is known as King John’s Castle to commemorate a visit by the monarch in 1210.
On the north side of Carlingford Lough is Mill Bay. It looks like a typical mudflat today, but during the 19th century this was covered with seaweed. This was due to large-scale cultivation of weed for the manufacture of kelp, which was sold and also used as fertiliser on the local farms. Local people, who claimed rights to sections of shoreline, laid out rows of large rocks in lines across the low tide area to which the brown seaweed attached in abundance. At one stage there were over a thousand of these seaweed beds covering an area about the size of the nearby town of Greencastle. In the depression between the two world wars, this local industry became neglected.
Sailing south from Carlingford towards Dublin, my friend John and I were not alone. A school of up to a dozen common dolphins joined the yacht, playing with each other in the bow wave from the boat like children released from a house to race around the garden. In a flat sparkling sea, they sped along beside the boat for over an hour, leaping from the water, slapping the surface with their tail flukes and even rubbing their bellies together as they swam at high speed. Common dolphins can swim at speeds up to twelve kilometres per hour, occasionally powering ahead of the boat like torpedos, then circling around and surprising us as they again approached from behind. This joyful spectacle continued almost to the coast of Dublin.
Rockabill
Lying off the seaside town of Skerries, the dramatic island of Rockabill with its iconic black-and-white lighthouse is largely deserted in winter but has a huge population of nesting terns in summer. Terns are among the seabirds that undertake long annual migrations to west Africa and back each year. Sandwich terns are the first to arrive in late March, with the bulk of the other species following in April and May.19
In the 1980s the Commissioners of Irish Lights made a decision to automate the majority of the lighthouses around the Irish coast, installing computer controls instead of the lighthouse keepers, many of whom had followed their fathers and grandfathers into the profession. One of the nearest lighthouses to Dublin is on Rockabill. Here, the dramatic lighthouse tower and buildings are perched on top of the largest of two small rocks, surrounded by miles of unbroken sea. I was working at that time in BirdWatch Ireland and made several visits to Rockabill where it was exciting to see so many terns again after destruction by the sea of the big colony at Tern Island in Wexford Harbour. Common terns were the most abundant nesting species then, but of special interest was the roseate tern, a declining species right across its range in Europe. Here the birds chose to nest in among the tall stands of tree mallow that had colonised the old lighthouse gardens. For years, the lighthouse keepers had acted as unofficial wardens of the tern colony, ensuring that there was no unauthorised disturbance at critical times of the nesting season. Automation of the site presented both a challenge and an opportunity for conservation of the terns.
Without the keepers present anyone could land on the island and cause the terns to desert but, worse, there was always a threat of either deliberate or accidental introduction of ground predators such as cats or rats which would cause devastation among these ground-nesting birds. However, the vacating of the island buildings offered a potential base for summer wardens. So, with the agreement of the Commissioners, we recruited the first in a series of enthusiastic ornithologists to spend several months each year managing the tern colony. Living for weeks at a time in fairly basic Victorian buildings, on an isolated rock in the Irish Sea surrounded by the screaming of thousands of seabirds, required both dedication and resilience. Fortunately, the first of the wardens in 1989 was Liam Ryan, who came from a Wexford family of lighthouse keepers – so he knew about isolated living conditions. Liam has been followed over the intervening thirty years by dozens of equally committed wardens who have ensured the protection and growth of the tern colony.
Approaching Rockabill thirty years later by yacht, I sailed around the shore of the island which looked like a huge beehive with clouds of white seabirds in the air all over the conical rocks. I dropped anchor in a sheltered creek between the two rocks and rowed ashore in my small dinghy to meet the wardens. The first job for the wardens each spring is the clearing of the previous year’s growth of tree mallow to create the space for thousands of tern nests. Then there is the deployment of hundreds of wooden nestboxes as shelters for the birds to lay their eggs out of sight of the larger gulls which would dive in for an easy meal if the nests were exposed. Many of the nestboxes were made by the carpentry classes of a local school in Balbriggan and some of these are placed in rows on rocky terraces like a large housing development. Finally, the wardens have to census the colony, monitor the number of eggs and chicks and place numbered rings on the legs of a sample of birds. This allows them to be followed in later years as the younger birds return to nest on the island – or spread out to other colonies. This bird is a global traveller and there have been a number of spectacular recoveries of Rockabill terns migrating to other continents including west Africa, Brazil and eastern USA.
The availability of suitable fish stocks in the waters surrounding this tern breeding colony is vital to its success. The roseate tern feeds mainly on sand eels, juvenile herrings and sprats, which are also key food sources for many other seabirds. Unfortunately, there is currently no scientific monitoring of these fish stocks and hence no early warning system for any collapse in the prey populations. BirdWatch Ireland researchers have recently undertaken high-speed boat trips following the terns from Rockabill out into the Irish Sea to observe where and on what fish they are feeding.
The results of all this work, which is supported by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, have been dramatic. At the start of the project in 1989 there were less than 200 pairs of roseate terns on Rockabill. Over three decades later the colony has increased rapidly and, in 2021, contained the nests of 1,704 pairs of roseate terns and 1,656 pairs of common terns – the largest single colony of the former species in Europe.20 With high breeding success in most years, roseate terns hatched on Rockabill have moved to nest in several other declining colonies around Ireland and Britain, thus spreading the population over a wider range. This is a highly successful conservation project which has developed new techniques that have been copied in a number of other locations.
Brian Burke worked for three successive summers as a warden on Rockabill. He says, ‘the more you watch a species, the more you learn about the “character”, including its motivations and the struggles it has gone through to get where it is today. It was a real privilege being able to spend every single day of the summer watching the terns go through the highs and lows of the breeding season, having travelled all the way from Africa in the hope of finding enough fish to feed their chicks. Even when the work for the day was done, we would stay outside and watch everything happening around us.’
Brian believes that the success of the Rockabill tern conservation project over the last three decades has been staggering. ‘Looking forward, we hope that the success of Rockabill will contribute to the establishment of roseate tern colonies elsewhere in the Irish Sea and north-west Europe to help provide some population resilience for the looming challenges of climate change and declining fish stocks in this part of their range.’
Lambay
I have been on the island of Lambay on numerous occasions, including a visit in the 1980s with then President of Ireland, Patrick Hillery, to meet the owner, Lord Revelstoke. This is the largest island on the east coast and it remains a privately owned wildlife sanctuary. Praeger related how in 1904 the new owner of the island, the banker Cecil Baring, came to the National Library seeking information concerning his new possession. ‘He told me how in Munich in 1903 he and his wife saw in The Field an advertisement “Irish island for sale”, and how they promptly bought it and set about making habitable its old castle. I think the Barings would have willingly spent their lives on the island, for they became intensely interested in everything it contained.’(WW) Baring was keen to ‘enhance’ nature on the island, so he introduced a herd of fallow deer and, curiously, a group of wallabies from Australia. The descendants of both species are still present today.
With common interests in natural history, Praeger and Baring quickly became friends and the former wrote how he and his wife spent ‘many a delightful holiday’ on the island as guests of the Barings. Praeger, who was deeply interested in island biogeography, the unique assemblage of species on an isolated area of land, relished this opportunity and wasted no time. ‘Shortly after he took possession of the island, I suggested to him that a detailed study of its natural productions – animal, vegetable and mineral – would be interesting, and might have important scientific results. He accepted the suggestion at once.’ Praeger immediately set about organising a team and, during 1905 and 1906, twenty different naturalists stayed on Lambay and, in his own words they ‘ransacked the island from end to end’. The result was a series of papers, published in the Irish Naturalist on the natural history of Lambay. Some of the animal groups were poorly studied at that time so it does not seem surprising today that the surveys resulted in five new species to science – three worms, a mite and a bristletail – and between eighty and ninety animals and plants that were previously unrecorded in Ireland.21
Prior to the Barings’ ownership, the botanist Henry Hart spent four days on the island in the summer of 1881, and four further days in the spring of 1882, accompanied by the naturalist Richard Barrington. Hart undertook a comprehensive survey of the plants on the island, and one of his more striking discoveries was a colony of over half a hectare of a very rare plant, the adder’s-tongue fern, with a ‘dozen plants in a 6-inch square sod’.22 During this period the people living on the island had left and a herd of fallow deer was introduced by the owner to develop a shooting estate here. Previously cultivated areas became overgrown and by the time of both Hart’s and Praeger’s visits, Lambay was probably experiencing a remarkable reversion, with a resurgence of ‘native’ vegetation such as heathland covering formerly cultivated ground.
A century later, Matthew Jebb, Director of the National Botanic Gardens, undertook a repeat survey of the plant communities on Lambay. His findings present a stark contrast to those of both Hart and Praeger. Seventy-eight plant species, formerly recorded for the island, have not been seen in recent years. A number of alien (or garden) plants have been introduced in their place. Heather areas, once widespread, have now disappeared completely. This shows clearly how land use can have significant impacts on the habitats and species in an area over time.23
In 2005, I made a number of visits to the island with another group of biologists, this time to census the large colony of grey seals that breed there. The main groups haul out on the cliff-bound eastern side and the easiest way to see them is from a small inflatable boat that can get in close to the rocks without risk of damage. The seal pups are born on some steep shingle beaches at the head of narrow gullies and especially in the numerous caves where they are out of sight and protected from storms. The white-coated pups are unable to swim for the first three weeks of life, so they lie in these sheltered places growing fat on their mother’s milk alone. Praeger was also fascinated by the grey seals. ‘Once I stalked a group of them there on a flat tidal rock until I lay among them and could count every bristle and hair on their mastiff-like faces; they watched me closely, but never stirred. And we had delightful adventures with white baby seals, quite devoid of fear, which bumped against the boat and let us stroke them while a watchful mother swam continuously and silently round.’(WW) Such interactions with wild animals are not encouraged today.
On numerous trips since then I have sailed around the island admiring and photographing the impressive seabird colonies here – the largest on the east coast of Ireland.24 Here the populations of common guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, herring gulls and shags are of special importance. By 2018 the huge guillemot colony had reached almost 60,000 individuals.25 Some studies of the shags have been undertaken here by Steve Newton and colleagues from BirdWatch Ireland. By attaching GPS devices to the birds they were able to demonstrate that the majority flew in a direct line to feed on the Kish Bank off Dublin Bay. Here the shallow waters provide ideal feeding grounds for the shoals of small fish that the shags bring back to chicks in the nests. Worryingly, the shag population of Lambay has fallen by almost 60 per cent in the last twenty years, suggesting that they are experiencing some difficulty finding enough fish.26 In contrast, a colony of gannets has become established on Lambay in recent years, and this had grown to reach 926 nests in 2015.27
Lambay was settled in ancient times and was important to Neolithic people as a source of the rock known as porphyry, which has distinctive white crystals.28 This hard rock was valuable for making stone axes, which could then be used to fell trees. The quarry site on Lambay is unusual for being the only Neolithic stone axe quarry with evidence for all stages of production, from quarrying to final polishing. Lambay was also one of the first landfalls in the Viking invasion of Ireland. In 795 AD the raiders sailed down the Irish Sea, their target being a small monastic settlement on the island. The monastery, built in 530 AD by an Irish scholar named Colmcille, was home to a small band of monks and scribes. A church, monastery and several small, corbelled stone huts and simple shelters were built here. The monks possessed little. The only items of value were the books, religious artefacts and holy relics that adorned the church and monastery walls. The Vikings used Lambay as a base for raids on the more substantial settlement of Dublin (Dubh linn) and eventually established the first Viking town in Ireland here.
As I sailed past the eastern promontory of Lambay I could see the cliff-bound cove to its south known as Tayleur Bay. Beneath the strong tidal stream here lies the wreck of a ship named the Tayleur, which sank in 1854 with the loss of 360 lives. It was one of the largest iron sailing ships in Europe at that time and, like the later doomed passenger ship Titanic, was the pride of the White Star Line. Launched the previous year in Liverpool, she had embarked with 650 passengers en route to Australia and a new life in the British colonies of that century. Unfortunately, a combination of bad weather, poor navigation equipment and incompetence of the crew led the ship to strike Lambay’s cliffs broadside on. The deck was said to be so close to the rocks that some men were able to jump ashore, but the majority drowned when the ship heeled over and sank.29 With this sobering thought in mind, I was careful to give the island and its fearsome reputation a wide berth on this occasion.
Ireland’s Eye
The craggy island of Ireland’s Eye stands prominently across the mouth of the harbour at Howth. It is hard to believe that this wild maritime landscape, with its spectacular cliffs, is just a few kilometres from Dublin city centre. This is an important site for breeding seabirds and also supports a number of protected habitats, rare plant species and several important cultural heritage features, such as a Martello tower and the ruined St Nessan’s church. The island is uninhabited at present but there is some evidence that it was previously farmed. The island has no built harbour and is generally accessed by small boats from Howth Harbour in good weather only. It is a popular destination for day-trippers and is visited by thousands of people each year between April and September.
Until recently, Ireland’s Eye was owned by the Gaisford-St Lawrence family, whose impressive home for many centuries has been Howth Castle and Demesne, overlooking the island. The lands in Howth, which included Ireland’s Eye, remained in the ownership of this family for over 800 years. Praeger described Howth as ‘a delightful old-world place. Even round its rock-bound margin houses were few and one could wander at will along its grassy slopes and over its broad heathery top.’(WW) Today, Howth has become a sprawling suburb of Dublin and is packed at weekends with day-trippers from the city.
With increasing numbers of visitors to the island, Fingal County Council took a special interest in 2016 in the context of the newly designated Dublin Bay Biosphere. It commissioned several key surveys from experts to define exactly the importance of the island for plants and habitats, seabirds and cultural heritage. Amid reports of increasing disturbance of the important seabird colonies by visitors and a few cases where gulls had attacked people to protect their nests, a network of paths was planned to improve access for visitors while simultaneously leading them away from the main gull colonies. This work was initiated in 2017 and completed in a day using a team of workers with hand-held strimmers. The presence of a number of invasive plant species was identified as a problem, as they have the potential to compete with and threaten some native plant communities. A start has been made in controlling these by physical removal.
The same year I was commissioned to prepare a comprehensive management plan for the whole island. Part of this work involved several visitor surveys during the summer. My son, Tim, and I travelled to the island, clambering out of the small boat onto the rocks beneath the impressive Martello tower. We climbed the steep slopes to the summit of the island, from where we could see all the paths, count the number of visitors landing during the day and map their distribution on the island. Surprisingly, the majority stayed around the landing place and did not explore the rest of the island at all or simply wandered down to the sandy beach for a picnic. The mown paths had clearly been a success, as most of the visitors remained on these and did not stray into the gull colonies.
We planned a series of low-impact signs at various strategic points to guide the visitors to the places of interest. The large and impressive cliffs at the eastern end of the island are a big attraction for birdwatchers. Here gannets nest on all the steepest slopes with crowded lines of guillemots and kittiwakes keeping up a continuous racket right through the day. On the top of the cliffs there is a large colony of cormorants and these are vulnerable to disturbance especially when the flightless chicks are sitting in the big nests. We recorded several dogs off their leads causing the adult birds to fly and we had to recommend that dogs should not be allowed on the island at all during the bird breeding season. Fingal County Council is now planning to improve the landings at the west end of the island to allow safe berthing of the ferries and disembarking of passengers.
Baldoyle Bay
Just to the west of Ireland’s Eye, and north of the Sutton promontory which links Howth to the mainland, lies one of the three estuaries of Fingal. Baldoyle Bay is almost surrounded by land except for a narrow entrance between Sutton and Portmarnock dunes. Most of the sand dunes are occupied by a large golf links and it was on the practice greens here that I found myself a few years ago watching brent geese through a telescope. The study, commissioned by Fingal County Council, was to monitor waterbirds on the lands around the estuary to ensure that enough open space was retained to accommodate them in this fast-developing suburb of Dublin.
Brent geese start each winter feeding in the Dublin estuaries but, when the seagrasses that they favour are exhausted, they move to foraging on coastal parks, sports pitches and golf courses. It is amazing to see a flock of over a thousand wild geese, recently arrived from their arctic breeding grounds, contentedly grazing in a park surrounded by people playing football, dogs being exercised and schoolchildren on their lunch breaks. Although constantly vigilant, the geese have become habituated to this human environment which gives them the essential forage that they need to survive till the return migration in the spring. What made this study so interesting was that a sample of the geese carried individually numbered rings on their legs, each with a unique colour-letter combination that allows identification, just like vehicle registration plates. This ringing programme is coordinated by the Irish Brent Goose Research Group. By recording a large number of these ‘colour-ringed’ geese I was able to map their movements between the grasslands and the estuary on a daily basis, and thus uncover the order of their preference for different sites. Sometimes I would arrive at dawn, as a big red sun rose from the Irish Sea, and watch a large V-shaped flock of geese flying in from their night-time roost on the North Bull Island in nearby Dublin Bay.
Dublin Bay
Framed perfectly between the rocky headlands of Howth and Dalkey, Dublin Bay has been the cradle of the capital city since it was established as a permanent settlement by the Vikings in the 8th century. I grew up on its shores, as did generations of my ancestors. I learned to swim and sail and fish here, and I have a deep familiarity with its waters and its shorelines to this day. Dublin Bay is so rich in nature and history that it is hard to know where to begin. Perhaps the words of James Joyce, who set his famous novel Ulysses here, are the most lyrical. ‘Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time.’ I have experienced the same crackling sensation while walking over thousands of empty razorshells cast up on the beach at Sandymount Strand.
Up to the late 19th century shellfish were regularly sold on the streets of Dublin city and up to seventy people, including many children, were engaged in collecting cockles on the wide strands at low tide. This was cold and difficult work that involved wading in shallow water to rake the shellfish from the top layers of sand. Records kept by coastguards show that between 80 and 104 tonnes of cockles were landed annually, and probably a lot more which went unrecorded.30
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries there were a number of typhoid epidemics in the city which were blamed on poor, unsanitary living conditions of the population. By 1904 this problem had also been linked to the gross pollution of Dublin Bay with untreated sewage and the consumption of contaminated shellfish. In 1890, five members of one family in Blackrock died from eating contaminated mussels. In the six years before the First World War, the landings of cockles declined dramatically and shellfish collecting for human consumption has been banned here ever since. The story of Molly Malone in the song ‘Cockles and Mussels’ is surprisingly close to the truth.31
The abundance of shellfish and other marine life in Dublin Bay is the main reason that it holds one of the largest concentrations of migrant shorebirds in Ireland. Huge flocks of brent geese, oystercatchers, godwits, dunlins and redshanks crowd into their high-tide roosts on Sandymount Strand and the North Bull Island. Since 2013, I have been fortunate to be involved in a large monitoring project on the Dublin Bay birds run by BirdWatch Ireland and funded by Dublin Port Company. We have had several exciting adventures, with a larger team of ornithologists, cannon-netting a sample of the birds to give them numbered leg rings and, in a few cases, satellite transmitters. Information gained from the subsequent observations and GPS fixes has added enormously to the information necessary for their conservation. For example, we now know that internationally important numbers of some species are present throughout the year, that some individuals return each year to feed on exactly the same stretch of shoreline and that in the summer most of our oystercatchers move to Scotland, Norway and Iceland to breed.
The long spit of Bull Island on the north side of the bay has one of the best-developed sand dune systems on the east coast and has a very large area of saltmarsh that the birds use as a safe refuge. The island itself is the result of engineering works undertaken at Dublin Port in the 1820s which created a retaining wall on the north side of the Liffey channel to aid navigation of ships in the shallow waters. In 1800, Captain William Bligh of the Royal Navy undertook a comprehensive depth survey of the entire bay. Bligh had previously become famous through his involvement in the mutiny on HMS Bounty in the Pacific Ocean and his extraordinary 4,000-mile voyage to safety in an open boat. Following Bligh’s survey, the North Bull Wall was built from Clontarf to the mouth of the Liffey. This had the desired effect of scouring out the sand bar at the mouth of the river and this sediment gradually redistributed itself on the northern shores, quickly forming a new island that now measures about five kilometres long and one kilometre wide. Today it is a popular recreational resource used by thousands of people and their dogs. When I am surveying bird flocks through a telescope here, I am regularly asked by passers-by if I have seen any rare species. They are usually stunned to learn of the vast numbers of common species such as waders and gulls using the bay.
Dublin Port
I often sail my yacht past the iconic red Poolbeg Lighthouse and into the mouth of the River Liffey, where enormous amounts of seawater and freshwater mix twice each day. The passage leads beneath the twin chimneys of the Poolbeg electricity generating station which are visible from most parts of Dublin. My destination is the sheltered marina run by Poolbeg Yacht and Boat Club, right in the centre of the port. My small boat is dwarfed by enormous cruise ships, cargo vessels and ferries in the river channel.
Black guillemots breed in many ports and harbours around the Irish coast, including Dublin Port, where up to fifty birds nest in a variety of structures, including holes in stonework and boarding ramps. With the modernisation of the quay walls many of these old cavities were replaced with concrete so Dublin Port Company provided a series of custom-made nestboxes, based on the experience of Julian Greenwood in Northern Ireland. These allow the birds to continue breeding close to human activity. I have been surveying these dapper black-and-white birds here annually over the last decade and I have always been impressed by how unconcerned they are by the shipping traffic and noise in the busiest port in the country. I stand on the deck of a launch, carefully scanning the quay walls all the way from the Poolbeg Power Station to O’Connell Bridge in the centre of the city. The birds poke their heads out of drainage holes in the older quays, sit in pairs on the top of the quay walls or on the water or even perch on the hulls of giant cargo vessels. They fly rapidly just above the water surface heading out into the bay to feed on small fish.
Terns have also been known to breed in Dublin Port since at least the 1940s. In 1995 the late Oscar Merne began a long-term study of the colony, which was then nesting on a disused mooring structure close to the ESB Poolbeg Power Station. He published an early analysis of his results from the period up to 2003.32 From 2012 the monitoring work was carried on by Steve Newton with a team of colleagues from BirdWatch Ireland. The main colony continued to grow and the terns were recorded trying to nest on moored boats, on the lock gates of the Grand Canal and various other unsuitable places. In 2013, Dublin Port Company decided to help the terns by providing a floating pontoon to allow the colony to expand. Moored between the port and Clontarf, this platform had wooden planks around its edges and a covering of gravel to mimic a stony beach. The terns readily adopted this artificial site so, in 2015, a second larger pontoon was moored off the Great South Wall and this was also used for nesting by both common and arctic terns.
In the winter of 2016–17 the wooden part of the original mooring structure, now over a century old, began to collapse into the sea. So the ESB undertook to rebuild this with a custom-made tern-nesting platform, benefitting from the successful trials of Dublin Port. By 2020 the entire colony, now nesting on four completely artificial structures, numbered almost 600 pairs, with some of the terns originating from Rockabill off the north Dublin coast. A thriving colony of these threatened seabirds nesting successfully each year in Dublin Port, close to the busy shipping traffic, is a clear demonstration of the benefits of conservation management. Developing and operating port infrastructure inevitably impacts the natural environment. However, as Eamonn O’Reilly, Chief Executive of Dublin Port Company says, ‘with a commitment to, at the very least, conserve the natural capital of the Port, there is no reason why such impacts cannot be positive.’
Dalkey Island
The southern arm of Dublin Bay stretches out beneath the hills of Killiney and Dalkey, ending in the rocky Dalkey Island. I love to sail with a fast-moving tide through the narrow sound between the island and the mainland, passing by the tiny stone pier at Coliemore Harbour. From the island side my yacht is watched by a group of grey seals resting on rocks close to the landing steps, and by a herd of wild goats grazing peacefully by the Martello tower which dominates the summit of the island. This is one of a string of twenty-six similar towers that stretched the full length of the Dublin coastline from Balbriggan to Bray, although only twenty-one of these still stand today. They were built in a very short time in 1804–05 when the British military authorities decided there was a good chance that Napoleon’s forces would attempt a landing near Dublin to take what was then regarded as the ‘second city of the Empire’. Eight of the towers had associated gun batteries; the one on the south end of Dalkey Island is especially impressive. Walking around the substantial battlements, built of huge cut-stone granite blocks, I tried to imagine a fleet of French ships, their square sails reflecting the morning sun, appearing around Bray Head to the south, and the small garrison on the island called to action stations with orders shouted by their officers. But Napoleon’s navy never did invade Ireland, and the towers were eventually decommissioned to remain empty for the next two centuries.33
On one of my many visits to Dalkey Island I met with the archaeologist Jason Bolton, who showed me several temporary settlement sites from ancient times. The most obvious signs are layers of empty seashells such as limpets well below the present ground surface but visible because waves have eroded away the sand at the back of the beach. These sites were excavated by David Liverage in the 1950s and have recently been reinterpreted by Barbara Leon. As well as the shell middens (or dumps) there was a collection of flint artefacts (flakes, scrapers and blades), hammer stones, arrowheads, stone axes, a grinding stone and primitive pottery. Postholes beneath these deposits indicate temporary shelters on the site. Other excavations on the island revealed bones of cattle, sheep, seals, fish and birds, as well a human burial which was dated to around 5,000 years before the present. Piecing all of this evidence together, I imagine a band of Stone Age people coming here repeatedly in summer to collect shellfish, seaweed, fish and perhaps to hunt birds and seals. The evidence for the structures suggests that the island was occupied at least for short periods, and the placing of a group of flint blades and flakes in a distinctive downward-facing position also suggests that it was used for occasional ritualistic ceremonies such as burials.34 Mesolithic people were widespread in Ireland but the exploitation of coastal resources by occupants of temporary camps was a key feature for these communities at certain times of year.35 This is confirmed by Melanie McQuade, who has excavated the remains of fish traps made of woven wattle fences containing mainly hazel rods, within what was then the Liffey estuary. These fences were set on the shoreline to catch fish swimming in and out with the tide.36
Today, Dalkey Island is a destination for visitors from local towns and from all around the world. People are taken across the short stretch of water to the island by the ferryman, Ken Cunningham. He is a great ambassador for the island, as he gives all the visitors an introduction to the history and wildlife of the area. Here, just a short train ride from the city centre, they find a natural coastal landscape, peace and quiet and beautiful views of the entire sweep of Dublin Bay and Killiney Bay. The beauty of the latter bay, viewed from the summit of nearby Killiney Hill, is often likened to the Bay of Naples.
Shanganagh Cliffs
Viewed from the sea, the southern part of Killiney Bay is backed by a line of low cliffs composed of boulder clay, and these are rapidly being eroded by the waves. This was the scene over a century ago of a remarkable find that puzzled many naturalists of the time. Praeger walked this shoreline in 1896, and he takes up the story:
One day in February last, Mr. R. Welch and I strolled along the beach northward of the new harbour at Bray, and just within the confines of the County of Dublin. At the verge of low water, where the slope of coarse shingle gives way to a more level stretch of fine sand and boulders, which is only left dry at spring tides, we noticed some stumps and boughs of trees, and on examining them, found that they were embedded in a compact layer of peat, which dipped southward at a low angle. The peat was full of branches and roots, and of cones of the Scotch Fir. On the southern side it disappeared under a bed of fine blue clay containing sea-shells; to the north, its broken edges overlay a stratum of coarse grey sand, with rounded fragments of granite. We had but cursorily examined the spot when the tide crept up again and soon hid it from view. Here evidently was a geological story to be unravelled; a long history lay buried with this old peat-bed under the mud and shingle which the sea had heaped upon it; and it was for us to read that history, if we could.37
What Praeger and Welch had stumbled upon was in fact a prehistoric forest of Scots pine with the timbers embedded in peat. The trees could either have grown on the site or logs may have been washed downstream and become embedded in sediments in a delta. Even the presence of peat on a submerged shoreline suggests settled terrestrial habitats at a lower sea level than present today. As would be expected of two of Ireland’s finest naturalists of their day, they made a detailed description of the site which was published a few months later in the journal The Irish Naturalist. Even 125 years ago, Praeger understood that this demonstrated the relative changes in land and sea levels since the last Ice Age. Much more recent technology using radiocarbon (C38) dating has enabled a precise date of 8,600 years before present to be estimated for the submerged timbers. With a much lower sea level at that time I can picture the areas now covered by shallow seawater to have been covered with woodland when the first humans arrived in Ireland. I took a walk along this shoreline at the very lowest point of the tide to see if I could rediscover Praeger’s ‘pine forest’. But extensive erosion over the last century has already removed much of the beach, and there was no sign of this fossilised landscape.
The Murrough
Sailing past Bray Head and into Greystones Harbour I feel at home, as this is where I berth my yacht for most of the year. The harbour at Greystones was where my father’s family went by train for their summer holidays in the 1920s, competing in swimming races in the harbour and learning to sail in small wooden boats. Now the quaint old harbour, with its rows of coloured fishing boats pulled up on the beach, has been replaced by a modern marina and a massive harbour wall. It is still popular today with crowds of day-trippers and local people using the small beach and the harbour walls throughout the year. It is a great place to learn to sail, with the great bulk of Bray Head and the Sugarloaf mountains providing shelter from the strongest of the westerly winds. I once noticed a cluster of seabirds off the harbour, with gannets and gulls diving into the water in a feeding frenzy. Then, without warning, a large minke whale surfaced among them, breaching several times as it joined the birds feeding on a shoal of fish.
Just to the south of the town I often walk along the top of the shingle beach at Kilcoole in summer where it is difficult to ignore the calls of the little terns that nest here among the stones. The smallest of the five species breeding in Ireland, they arrive here in May from their wintering grounds in west Africa. I can pick them out by their dainty, moth-like flight. Each pair lays up to four eggs on the ground but the nest is just a depression in the shingle and the birds rely on camouflage to protect their eggs and young chicks from predation. However, unintentional disturbance by walkers and dogs on the beach can be fatal if the adults are kept away from the nests and the eggs robbed by the ever-present crows or gulls.
Back in the 1980s, I was working for the Irish Wildbird Conservancy (now BirdWatch Ireland) and in the summer I often met local birdwatchers here. We were all concerned about the level of disturbance to the terns on the beach so a group of us decided to mount a voluntary watch on the site, to erect some signs and to approach regular walkers here asking for their cooperation to help the terns during the few short weeks that they spent on the beach. Several members of the newly formed Wicklow Branch of IWC spent many days here and established a wardening scheme that could benefit the terns.
By 1990, we had purchased a caravan and this was moved to the site during the summer so that the wardens, now paid for their work, could look after the colony for 24 hours a day. It was quickly discovered that foxes were raiding the nests at night and cleaning out many eggs and chicks. Electric fencing was erected on the inland side of the colony with plenty of signs to explain the purpose of these measures to visitors. As the survival of the chicks improved and the colony grew over the years, other scavengers and predators were attracted to the site. Hooded crows gathered to steal the eggs, kestrels developed a taste for the chicks and even a peregrine was seen hunting the flying terns.
Occasionally, the sea also took its toll on the colony. Whenever a high spring tide coincided with strong onshore winds there was a risk that nests, especially those further down the beach, would be swamped by seawater. Anticipating this, the wardens were sometimes able to move the eggs up the beach in advance of the high tide, in the hope that the adult terns would continue to incubate. Such extreme conservation measures were justified as the Kilcoole colony had become the most important single breeding site for little terns in Ireland.
By 2020, the conservation work on the little tern colony at Kilcoole had been in operation for over three decades, supported for most of that time by the National Parks and Wildlife Service. The breeding population of little terns was one of the highest levels on record, with over 150 pairs making many breeding attempts that season.39 I regularly sail along this coast in summer and it is always a pleasure when the boat is surrounded by these dainty seabirds dipping and diving into the waves.
The beach at Kilcoole is part of a large coastal feature on the Wicklow coast known as the Murrough. This is a complex of shingle beaches, lagoons and wetlands that stretches for fourteen kilometres along the coastal strip from Kilcoole Station in the north to Wicklow town in the south.39 When I first visited the Kilcoole Marshes on the coast of County Wicklow in the 1980s there was regular shooting here and bird numbers in winter were small. Now the area is fully protected and flocks of lapwing and wigeon arrive from northern lands while greylag and brent geese graze the fields. I often watch otters here as they play and hunt in the shallow brackish waters that fill the lagoons. In summer the shingle here is bright with coastal plants such as yellow horned-poppy, sea campion and bird’s-foot trefoil. Oystercatchers breed here and ringed plovers lead walkers away from their eggs at the top of the beach with their classic ‘broken wing’ display.
This is one of the best birdwatching areas within easy reach of Dublin City. In the centre is BirdWatch Ireland’s East Coast Nature Reserve extending to over 92 hectares. It includes wet grassland, fen and wet birch woodland. As well as being important in its own right, the reserve is becoming increasingly valuable for wintering waterbirds, largely due to the management programme that was implemented here. The reserve was opened to the public in 2009 following funding support from the EU LIFE‐Nature programme that enabled BirdWatch Ireland to purchase the reserve and carry out a range of habitat restoration work, including wetland creation and woodland management. A key part of the work involved installing controls on water levels in order to restore the wetland habitats that had been whittled away through agricultural drainage over the decades. Shallow pools were created and reedbeds reinstated to give cover and feeding to birds like little grebe and grey heron.
When I walked along recently beside the railway, flocks of whooper swans cruised in to land on the floodwaters with loud ‘whooping’ calls. Here they joined thousands of ducks including wigeon, teal and shoveler and waders like curlew and black-tailed godwits, all feeding intensively in the wet ground. Then, out of nowhere, a hen harrier appeared quartering above the reeds that fringe the wetlands. It was hunting for small songbirds and occasionally it dropped out of sight, presumably intending to strike a victim.
Since the reserve opened a network of paths has been created with wooden boardwalks over wet ground, and there are state-of-the art birdwatching hides for visitors. Interpretation boards along the trail explain what can be seen and why the reserve was created. As well as local people and individual birdwatchers there are many visits by schools and other groups. Numbers of visitors have increased, so there is a need for a good car park on the narrow, winding road to the main entrance. BirdWatch Ireland volunteers help to maintain the facilities. In its first ten years the reserve has been an unqualified success, restoring a coastal wetland and attracting a diverse community of waterbirds.
At the reserve, I met Eric Dempsey, local birdwatcher and writer. He said, ‘the East Coast Nature Reserve has been changed from a dry area into a superb habitat with flooded fields, extensive reedbeds and woodlands. The diversity of bird species found throughout the year is growing as the reserve matures. To have such a fantastic reserve so close is special, not just for me as a birder, but for the community, schools and the many visitors enjoying the facilities that the reserve has to offer. For me this is a dream come true.’
Wicklow Head
Wicklow Harbour is the location for the start and finish of the biennial Round Ireland Yacht Race. Described as Ireland’s premier offshore yacht race, it is the second-longest race in the Royal Ocean Racing Club calendar. Circling the entire island of Ireland in a clockwise direction, the yachts cover just over 700 nautical miles (1,100 kilometres) in a race that can include everything from gales to doldrums. Organised by Wicklow Sailing Club, the first race took place in 1980 with only sixteen boats. In 1982 a full gale lashed the seventeen-strong fleet and all but a few boats ran for shelter.40 Since then, the fleet has grown steadily, and now attracts entrants from all over the world. The fastest time for the race, at just over a day and a half, was set in 2016 by the Sultanate of Oman’s flagship trimaran.
Wicklow Harbour is where I used to moor my own boat but I moved it permanently to Greystones after a north-easterly storm tore it from the moorings and threatened to wreck it on the beach. I know these waters very well, having many times sailed out to the Codling Bank and the Arklow Bank offshore. The biggest challenge is the strong tidal stream that powers past Wicklow Head on both a rising and falling tide. The headland sticks out into the Irish Sea, making it the most easterly part of the Republic of Ireland, and the tide moving up the Irish Sea is forced to flow faster, just like a river flowing around an obstacle in its path.
This fast tidal race is one of the reasons why the seabed at this location has an unusual reef made entirely by the honeycomb worm Sabellaria alveolata. The animals live in small tubes that they construct by cementing together coarse sand and shell material. The tubes are arranged in big clusters and look something like the inside of a wild bee’s nest where the insects have built their honeycomb in random shapes. These reefs range from thirty centimetres to two metres in height and take the form of hummocks, sheets or, sometimes, massive formations. On their own these structures are interesting but the diversity of other marine animals which live in nooks and crannies of the reef, somewhat like coral reefs in tropical seas, make them a hotspot for marine life. This includes hydroids, polychaete worms, molluscs, bryzoans, barnacles, amphipods, crabs, starfish, brittlestars and sea squirts. The Wicklow Head Reef is of high conservation value, as it is the only documented example in Ireland of shallow-water reef built entirely by marine animals.
The headland is also a mecca for grey seals, which breed mainly in a number of large caves carved out by the sea under the contorted mica schist rocks. My curiosity drove me to explore one of these dark, mysterious places to find out where the seals were giving birth. I lifted the outboard engine on my small inflatable boat, rowed over the shallow rocks at the entrance and into pitch blackness. The sea was flat calm that day, and the tide was still dropping, so there was no risk of getting trapped. Nevertheless, a light swell kept the sea surface moving and ripples slapped against the sides of the cave. I stowed my oars and, with a strong head torch to show the way, used my hands on the seaweed-covered rocks to push the boat deep into the recesses of the cave. I could hear the plaintive cries of at least one seal pup calling for its mother from the boulder beach at the back of the cave. Then, in the torchlight I saw it – a small, weak-looking pup with a pure white coat. The adult seal slipped silently into the water and, with the speed and power of a torpedo, flashed beneath my boat and into the safety of the open sea. She hung about at the mouth of the cave waiting anxiously for the chance to return to her pup, so I retreated and left them both in peace. The pups are born here in September and October at a time when storms can drag them off the open beaches, so they are relatively safe in the higher parts of these caves. In a few weeks, after the pups become independent, large haul-outs of up to a hundred animals gather on the storm beaches of Wicklow Head, where they lie moulting and regrowing their mottled fur.
Above one of the largest caves on Wicklow Head stands the modern lighthouse. The light was automated in the 1980s and some of the keepers’ houses have been sold to private interests. A much older lighthouse still stands on the summit of the headland. Octagonal in plan, it originates from 1781, when it was built as part of a unique pair of twin lighthouses. At the time there were only two other lighthouses on the whole east coast, and it was considered that a single light might be confused by approaching seafarers with either of the lights on Hook Head to the south or Howth Head to the north. This was a route that ships would use approaching the Irish coast to pass safely between the shallows of the Arklow Bank to the south and the India Bank to the north. However, the upper light was often obscured in foggy weather, and so a third tower was built in 1818 much closer to sea level and the upper building was decommissioned.41 Today, the older tower is a comfortable apartment managed by the Irish Landmark Trust and available for visitors to rent. On a clear day it gives fine views of the coastline to the north and south and of the Wicklow mountain range to the west.
Arklow
Sailing down the east coast past Wicklow Head with my friend Cormac, we passed by a line of seven large wind turbines, the only ones to be built so far on the seabed off the Irish coast. I have sailed up so close to these huge structures that the rotors seem to be turning slowly almost overhead. Commissioned in 2004, the development on the Arklow Bank was intended to be the first phase of a huge windfarm with 200 turbines but delays with onshore facilities and licencing have so far prevented further building. Each of the existing turbines reaches 124 metres from the seabed to the top of the blades or about the length of a standard Gaelic football pitch. I have to be careful, though, because the turbines were built on the crest of a shallow submarine ridge of sand and gravel. Praeger remarked:
The great banks of sand and gravel that lie some miles out at intervals all the way from Dublin Bay to Carnsore Point represent the wreck of a land made of glacial drift. These banks have been moulded by the tides so that they form narrow north-south ridges, and wave action maintains their crests at a very uniform depth of one to two fathoms, while the surrounding water is deep enough to float the largest vessel. Lightships on their seaward side warn vessels off, for the banks are a mere death-trap. If a ship grounds, the tide digs a deep hole on the down-stream side, into which the vessel topples and in a surprisingly short time she disappears completely.(WW)
Suitably warned, I entered the port of Arklow between two narrow training walls that reach out into the Irish Sea carrying the sediment-filled waters of the Avoca river. From its tributaries, the Avonmore, Avonbeg and Glenealo, to the sea this river drains most of the east side of the Wicklow mountain range. Tying up to a pontoon alongside the river walls, I can see immediately that the water quality here is not good. This is still one of the few coastal towns in Ireland without a modern sewage treatment plant, although plans are well advanced for a new facility located in the redundant industrial area on the north quay. However, the project will take a number of years to construct.
Unfortunately, this river also has a long history of industrial pollution, largely emanating from the Avoca Mines which operated some ten kilometres upstream. There has been mining in this area since pre-Christian times, but the first modern record of a copper mine here dates from the end of the seventeenth century. By the 1840s sulphur became the main focus of the mine operations. The harbour at Arklow was still undeveloped at this stage, with ore being transferred by small vessels to larger ships, lying at anchor offshore, before export to Britain.42 Mine waste was pumped into large settlement ponds, some just upstream of Arklow town, and the legacy of these is the toxic residue of heavy metal that continues to find its way to the river, causing damaging impacts on the marine and freshwater life. James Wilson, of Trinity College Dublin, studying marine molluscs here, found that some species were unable to reproduce at all.43 For decades this river and its estuary were among the most polluted in Ireland, but things have been slowly improving with the rehabilitation of the mine waste.
Arklow has a long maritime history, and was once an important fishing town and boat-building centre. As I walked down some of the narrow lanes that lead from the main street to the river, I could imagine hundreds of small sailing boats lining the quays, a bustling community of fishermen and fishsellers, women working on the manufacture and repair of nets and timber boats under construction. Since at least the 1770s, the Tyrrell family designed, built or skippered boats out of Arklow. The shipbuilder John Tyrrell founded a family business here in 1864 and, after building dozens of fishing smacks and other sailboats, he and his son built the firm’s first motor-powered yacht in 1904. I walked up to the Arklow Maritime Museum on the North Quay to learn about the building here in 1981 of the traditional sail training ship Asgard II, which eventually sank in the Bay of Biscay in 2008.
Leaving my boat in Arklow, I walked along a beach called Enerreilly north of the town where the Redcross River meanders into the sea. The beach here is made up of flat stones interbedded with large quantities of empty oyster shells. I used to collect these from various beaches in south Wicklow and, after smashing them with a sledgehammer, gave them to our poultry who needed calcium to make their eggshells stronger. I wondered why the empty shells were so numerous on these beaches as there are no native oysters alive today on the east coast. According to Noel Wilkins, a marine biologist in Galway, there were enormous and prolific oyster beds off the coasts of Wicklow and Wexford up to the early 19th century, and these are shown on a number of ancient maps of the Irish Sea.
The increasing urban populations of the early 1800s led to a massive increase in exploitation of oysters close to the city of Dublin and, for a while, these were restocked with shellfish from the Arklow beds. Traditionally these had been dredged by oystermen from Arklow and shipped to Liverpool for the English markets. In the 1840s about a million oysters were exported each year from this port alone to restock the depleted beds on the English Channel coast which had been supplying the important London markets. Twenty years later the landings in Arklow had reached unsustainable levels of 30 million oysters each year, and it was not long before the local beds became depleted themselves. By the end of that century the beds had been commercially exhausted and never recovered.44 This classic case of overfishing remains a sad tale from the Irish coast and accounts for the large quantity of empty shells on the beach, most of which must have been in the sea for more than a century.
Wexford Harbour
Passing the long, straight coastline of north Wexford, I can see the low cliffs near Morriscastle, where the sea has eaten away at the soft sediments and where there is a classic example of a building that has partially collapsed into the sea. The afforested peninsula of Raven Point marks the entrance to Wexford Harbour, which is one of the largest estuarine areas on the east coast. Sailing into the sandy harbour is hazardous due to shallow water, but fishing trawlers and small cargo vessels do moor alongside the quay walls in Wexford town. The wider bay is a confusing maze of shallow sandy banks and channels which was once twice as large as it is at present.
The Wexford Slobs were reclaimed from the sea in the 1840s and closely resemble some of the polders found in the Netherlands. Two long sea-dykes were built enclosing a total of over 2,000 hectares of mud and sandflats which were then converted into grassland with some cereal and root crops. To maintain this farmland in a dry condition, surplus water must be continually pumped out to the harbour. In 1969 the Wexford Wildfowl Reserve was established on the North Slob and today this holds a large portion of the world population of Greenland white-fronted geese and pale-bellied brent geese, together with a wide range of other waterbirds. This is also one of the best places in Ireland to see wild Irish hares, which seem to prosper on the large open fields that are mostly lacking hedges. Just north of Wexford town, I went to the viewing tower at the visitor centre, which gives ideal views of the birds on the nearby ponds and fields. I sat on the sea wall as the sun set over Wexford town and watched long skeins of geese fly out from the North Slob to their night-time roosts on the sandbanks in the harbour.
The shallow waters of Wexford Harbour are an important place for the bottom culture of mussels. The shellfish are generally grown from juvenile mussels (or seed) dredged elsewhere and laid out on the sandbanks in the harbour. After several years the full-grown mussels are harvested with up to 7,000 tonnes landed and sold here each year.45 The spat (or juvenile shellfish) are released by mature mussels into seawater in millions each year, and these settle on suitable stretches of seabed. Shortage of spat has been a problem in recent years and, despite an increase in seed mussel fishing in the Irish Sea by a fleet of licensed dredgers fitted with underwater cameras, the present annual catch of around 20,000 tonnes only provides about a third of the actual seed needed. I have often seen the slow-moving dredgers working along the Wicklow sandbanks with the teeth of the dredges scraping the seabed and collecting everything in their path, including much bycatch. In the last decade surveys by Bord Iascaigh Mhara, Ireland’s seafood development agency, have recovered very few seed mussels here, and in some cases report only large numbers of starfish and dogwhelks, both predators of mussels.46 This looks suspiciously like another case of overfishing, with the seabed no longer suitable for spat settlement.
Guarding the south side of the entrance to Wexford Harbour is the long, low sandy spit of Rosslare Point, which has been broken up several times in the past by easterly storms. In the 1950s, sand from the point redistributed inside the harbour and gradually built up into a dune which became known as Tern Island. The island was unstable and continually changed shape but despite this it quickly became the largest tern colony in Ireland. As I related in the introduction, I went here several times in the 1970s to assist with a research project, and the cacophony of sound from thousands of seabirds was impressive, with all five Irish breeding tern species and a large number of black-headed gulls nesting here.47 Several years later the island was completely washed away in storms, and the birds redistributed to Lady’s Island Lake on the south Wexford coast and to Rockabill island off north Dublin.
Carnsore Point
As I sailed from the north towards the south-east corner of Ireland the most prominent landmark was the distinctive outline of Tuskar Rock. The massive granite lighthouse stands high on a flat-topped rock to guide ships past the dangerous rocks off Carnsore Point. However, this place has a history of tragedy. Building of the lighthouse began in 1812, but on a night in October that year a sudden, severe storm blew up, whipping the sea into a cauldron of enormous waves. The rock is located exactly where Atlantic swells meet tides coming down the Irish Sea and gales from the Bay of Biscay. In the days before accurate weather forecasting there was no warning, and waves swept over the rock, tearing away the wooden dormitories of the twenty-four workmen. Ten men were drowned, although the remainder survived by clinging onto the rocks for two days until they were rescued. Incredibly, all the survivors returned to continue their construction work and the lighthouse began its service three years later.
Since then the lighthouse has guided ships into the Irish Sea for over two centuries, but on just one occasion it failed to be lit up. This coast was a favourite location for smugglers to land contraband shipped in from French ports. In 1821, the cutter Shark was bound for Wexford town under cover of darkness with a cargo of French brandy, candles made from sperm oil and several other commodities that were taxable. When the crew saw a coastguard cutter patrolling the entrance to Wexford Harbour, they landed the boat in a cove on Tuskar Rock and entrusted their illegal load to the lighthouse keepers on the promise of a cut of the goods on their return. When the Shark approached the Tuskar a few nights later, the crew were surprised to find the lighthouse unlit and the two lighthouse keepers totally drunk and asleep. By complete coincidence, on that very night the Royal Yacht carrying King George IV was passing the area accompanied by a Royal Navy escort bound for Dublin Bay. Failing to find the Tuskar light, the yacht ran for shelter on the Welsh coast instead.48 Despite the presence of the lighthouse, an American ship was wrecked on the nearby Blackwater Bank in 1859, with 424 passengers and crew being drowned. When divers later examined the sunken wooden hull they found nearly 300 corpses below deck, suggesting that they had been trapped here as the ship sank.49
In 1968 this was also the location of a major air accident that puzzled investigators for many years afterwards. Aer Lingus flight EI712 was on route from Cork to London when it disappeared into the sea just off the coast of Wexford near Tuskar Rock. All fifty-seven passengers and crew died, making it the single biggest loss in the history of Irish aviation. Rumour surrounded the accident for many years. The most popular theory was that the aircraft had been fired on during a British military exercise in the Irish Sea, and that this had been covered up by the London government. More than thirty years later, detailed forensic work by an expert international team concluded that this was simply an accident caused by damage to a tailplane shortly after takeoff, which sent the aircraft into a fatal downward spiral.50
There is a traditional boat associated with the Wexford area called the ‘Rosslare cot’ which, despite its small size, was a seagoing craft. Its clinker-built planking and pointed bow and stern may even have evolved from the boat-building methods of the Vikings who settled in Wexford in the 9th century. These boats, which were between nine and twelve metres long, ranged over the Irish Sea. During the 1920s as many as forty-six large cots were fishing out of Rosslare, each crewed by four men. In settled weather some Rosslare fishermen would row out the sixteen kilometres of open sea to Tuskar Rock, where line fishing was profitable.
The other main landmark in this area is the large windfarm on Carnsore Point, just south of Rosslare. This was the site of a controversial proposal to locate Ireland’s nuclear power station here in the 1970s. The plan was for one, and eventually four, nuclear power stations, but anti-nuclear groups organised a series of rallies and concerts at Carnsore Point in protest. The gatherings were accompanied by a big publicity campaign that brought the whole issue of nuclear power in Ireland into the public eye. The proposal was dropped in the late 1970s and the ESB eventually used the land for one of Ireland’s first renewable energy projects.
These fourteen wind turbines are still among the few that are located close to a beach in Ireland. I know this place intimately, as I spent two years carrying out research here to discover if there were any negative impacts of the windfarm on the shorebirds using the nearby beach. Migratory godwits, curlews, oystercatchers, dunlins and a number of other wader species feed each day within the shadow of giant turbine blades rotating in the almost constant wind. Using a strong telescope, I was able to count the number of worms or shellfish eaten per minute by a large sample of birds and compare this with rates measured on similar beaches where there were no turbines. My clear finding was that the behaviour of the birds was unaffected by the turbine activity, and that their feeding rate, and hence their chances of surviving the winter and the long return migration to the arctic, was dependent mainly on the density of their prey beneath the sandy beach. With great political pressure now to increase the contribution of renewable energy to the national grid, there will be a need to locate more windfarms on the coast in future, but great care needs to be taken in siting them where they will cause least disturbance to wildlife.
Leaving the East Coast
Despite being overshadowed by the more famous Wild Atlantic Way, the east coast of Ireland has many places of interest, and some which I have yet to discover. This coastline is relatively straight and low-lying, with fewer islands than the rest of the country, although there are many estuaries that are important links in a chain of migratory bird habitats. More sheltered from the Atlantic winds and wave energy which come mainly from the west, it provides ideal conditions for major ports such as Belfast, Dublin and Rosslare, with the largest yachting marinas in Ireland at Bangor, Howth and Dún Laoghaire. With the cities of Belfast and Dublin situated on sheltered bays, it is more urban than the other coastlines, and has a history of extensive trade with Britain and Europe. There are strong family links here too between Ireland and the facing coasts of Scotland, England and Wales. The Vikings first landed on the east coast in the 9th century, and they left behind a legacy in the placenames such as Strangford, Carlingford, Wicklow and Wexford. The east coast offers unlimited space for casual, beach-based recreation and more formal water sports such as sailing.
Praeger was born near Belfast and lived for most of his life in Dublin, where he explored and documented key elements of the natural history of the east coast. Living within sight of the Irish Sea for most of my life too has given me an intimate knowledge of its inshore waters and varied shorelines. Taking care to navigate safely through some dangerous rocks off Carnsore Point, I leave the east coast and set sail along the start of the south coast with the Saltee Islands in sight.