This, year, my year of getting really, obsessively interested in wildlife, I decided to set myself a goal. That is, photograph and identify fifty different species of bird. I wasn’t sure if I’d succeed or not, because plenty of times I’d “get stuck”, having seen 44 birds, and not seeing any new species for a while, and, coming up to December, I was stuck at 48 for quite some time. But then, two birds arrived and made sure my mission would be complete! Here’s a charming teal.
Great colours!
Teals are a tiny little duck. In fact, when I saw them first, I wondered was I looking at the juveniles, but no, I was looking at adults, they’re just that small! There’s a few of them currently residing in the Glen River Park, they seem to like hiding in the parts of the water obscured by tree branches, so they can be quite hard to spot, but I spot them every now and then.
So now I was at 49, but my plans could still potentially be scuppered. A trip down the Mahon to Passage West Greenway, along which you’ll see a wide variety of water birds, yielded no new sightings. My plans for getting that sweet number 50 all hinged on seeing something new along the greenway, so I wondered would I have to resign myself, to the year 2024 ending with 49 birds.
But 49’s not too bad you might say? HA? How naive of you! You don’t know what having a brain that has bizarre fixations on certain numbers is! You see, for some reason, my brain likes “rounded up” numbers, like 20, 30, 40, etc, my brain does not like numbers like 19,29, 39, etc. It feels like there’s a certain sense of incompleteness to them. So, in a way, despite loving getting to see the adorable teals, 48 or less would have been less annoying than 49. But yesterday, quite unexpectedly, I completed my bird related mission.
Hello blurry bird!
I had had a wonderful evening of photographing birds in the Glen River Park, and recording their bird sounds. Nevertheless, these were all birds I’d seen before. Great, I loved seeing these old friends again, but, with the sun going down, with the light fading and the cold setting in, I decided there was no more could be done today, and so I started towards home.
And that’s when my blurry friend landed in the river that flows through the Glen River Park, hence the name, right in from of me. This was a predicament, with such low lighting, it simply wouldn’t be possible to get a good picture, but I had no idea was this bird visiting the park as a freak occurrence, or would they be back. Nothing to do but take the best pictures I could despite quickly losing the light, and hoping I could get an I.D on my new friend.
And as luck would have it, despite the photo above being the clearest one I got, I managed to identify the bird. It’s a dipper! So that’s fifty! I’m really happy at such a good start to bird watching, my first year of it and already I’ve seen a great variety of weird and wonderful birds.
How I Decided What Constitutes A Bird Sighting
I had only two real rules for what for my purposes, counted as a bird sighting. The first one was that it had to be a bird that was born in the wild, if the bird lived its entire life in the wild, it counted. This meant I counted things like feral pigeons, despite the fact that their evolutionary path has been altered at least somewhat by human beings, but the main point was that these birds were born in the wild and lived their whole life there. While if I saw someone’s pet bird, that wouldn’t count as a sighting. It didn’t make sense that if I happened to see somebody’s pet budgie it couldn’t as a “wildlife sighting”. This led to a lot of frustrating ambiguities, for example, I saw this beautiful farmyard goose in the Lough.
A quite beautiful bird, but I had to decide this bird didn’t count as a sighting.
The reason I couldn’t count this bird was because I could get no verification on whether this bird was born in the Lough, or whether they were born in captivity and then released. There was too much doubt, so while I love seeing this lovely white bird, I didn’t include them on my list of sightings.
My second rule was that birds that I have known about for as long as I can remember don’t count. I don’t recall a time ever in my life, even as a very small child, when I didn’t know what a mallard, a mute swan, a robin and a magpie were. While I love to see them, and I have many photographs of them, because knowledge of what they are is as common as what a cat or a dog is, I just didn’t feel they counted as a wildlife discovery.
I love robins, but I concluded that they don’t count as a wildlife discovery.
What about seagulls, crows, and pigeons?
These are very common birds, surely they don’t count? Strangely enough, after initially excluding them because they’re birds that I have known about all my life, I decided in the end that yes, they do count as wildlife sightings. Let me explain.
While there are many different types of swans, I’ve always had a clear picture of a mute swan in my head, even though I didn’t know the name of it. This is because I’ve seen them in the Lough since childhood. So I know them well, always have, the birds with the orange beaks and incredibly bright white feathers.
However, I realized that I had absolutely no idea of what the different categories of crow were. I couldn’t tell you to save my life which one of the crows was a jackdaw. I didn’t have a faint clue which of the seagulls was black headed gull. And I didn’t know which one of the pigeons was a wood pigeon. So I decided that photographing and identifying the different species of crow, seagull and pigeon could become part of my goal. And I benefited greatly from it. Now I can tell which crow is the jackdaw with ease!
Jackdaw there you are!
So, despite many setbacks, I managed to reach my goal of photographing and identifying fifty birds. But it was important that this didn’t become a mere box ticking exercise, that in reaching that number, I became more acquainted with the many wonderful birds that live in this country. We’re blessed to live in such a small country and have such a vast variety of birdlife. So, I’d like to talk about some of the birds I made friends with along the way, and what I like about them.
Song Thrush
A song thrush, always a delight to see.
With song thrushes, it doesn’t matter whether I see or hear them, my day is made either way. The emotional effect of their song is very hard to describe. I hear a sound, and am filled with an enormous sense of elation, before my brain has had a chance to identify what the sound is! And yes, I have sound recordings!
I hope my poor sound recording equipment (my phone) gives you some idea of what they sound like, but I’d advise anyone to go out and listen to the sound of a song thrush, it is one of the most haunting, and most beautiful sounds I have ever heard.
Woodpigeon
WOO, WOO, WOO, WOO, WOO, WOO, WOO,WOO!!!
As I started looking for rarer and rarer birds, I spent less time looking for woodpigeons, I developed an attitude of “they’re so common why should I care about them”. But I soon realized this was a bizarre way to look at it, it doesn’t matter whether they are common or rare birds, every bird is an intelligent and amazing type of animal. And the woodpigeon is now one of my favourites. Just getting out the binoculars and looking at one sitting in a tree makes all my troubles go away. And sadly I don’t have a recording, but their rich baritone call is one of my favourite bird sounds.
Also when I’m at home and need my overactive brain to calm down watching videos of woodpigeons really helps!
Curlew
Sadly no audio recording of this bird, but my emotional reaction to curlews is similar to my reaction to song thrushes, I love either seeing them or hearing them, and their beautiful sound makes all of my troubles just go away. I love how exotic and alien they look, it’s like they shouldn’t even live in Ireland, or on planet Earth! Sadly, these birds are on the red list, and it breaks my heart that I may see a day when they are no more of them. But that’s how things are, unless we start to really care about the future of these birds, we’ll wake up to find that there aren’t any left.
Tufted Duck
Another exotic and alien looking duck, I encounter these guys in the Lough all the time. And since Winter begun, there’s been a lot more of them, I counted seventeen there a few weeks ago. I remember seeing one of these ducks for the first time, their bright yellow eyes were so amazing to see! I don’t consider any trip to the Lough complete without seeing them.
Northern Shoveller
This is a male northern shoveller. I didn’t see many during the Summer but I started seeing more and more of them as we moved into Autumn. I love their very distinctive colours, with their bright yellow eyes, and green heads, and brown feathers on the body, almost like a mallard on steroids!
Jay
Despite them being a fairly shy bird around humans, this was one of the first birds I encountered when I began birdwatching, they were around a lot in the Spring in the Glen River Park, then they disappeared for a while, and now they’re back! They look incredibly unusual, with their black mustache, yes, I’m calling that a mustache, and combination of orange and blue feathers. They make a really cool raspy sound also, and I’ve a recording of it.
And last but not least, the mighty buzzard!
Of all the birds I’ve seen, I’d probably count the buzzard as the most majestic. They’ve got for want of a better way of putting it, an eagle like quality to them. Seeing them in flight is just a magical experience, I saw one through binoculars the other day, and audibly said “WOW!” at the top of my voice. Hope I didn’t scare any of the wildlife! This is the clearest ever picture of a buzzard I’ve ever gotten in flight, and I hope very much to get even clearer shots, where you can clearly see the face of this skilled pilot.
I absolutely love their call as well. Here’s a recording of that. It’s amazing and pierces my soul.
So, I hope this explanation of my main birdwatching goal for this year has been interesting and informative, and now that you know more about the amazing animals we share this planet with, why not go out and have a look at some of these amazing creatures!
Ponderings Of An Autist 
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