It’s autumn and our summer birds are now well en-route to their wintering grounds of tropical Africa, escaping the cold, damp Irish winters. But we needn’t be too sad — they’ll be back in a few short months.
And in the meantime, tens of thousands of feathered visitors are streaming into our airspace every day and night. Redwings, fieldfares, various species of ducks and geese, and more, are all pouring in from far northern latitudes: Iceland, Greenland, Arctic Canada, Scandinavia, and so on. These are tough birds used to harsh conditions, but they’re no match for the subzero winter conditions of those parts, so they jump ship and head south. Our Irish winters are nothing to them.
I have a friend, Alan Dalton, originally from Dublin but now living near Stockholm, on the Swedish east coast. I was (somewhat naively) surprised when he told me the forests there fall silent in the winter, and that it regularly drops to -3°C in and around Stockholm, but that it can fall below -20°C further north. So, the majority of those birds just leave. He’s even seen delicate little wrens flying south, out over the North Sea in autumn. It’s a do-or-die situation for them.
The Scandinavian peninsula forms a vital route on the east Atlantic migratory flyway, as birds exit south through Europe for warmer climes to the south. Birds naturally want to fly over land for the majority of their journey, so if they need to bail out of the sky at night as a result of sudden stormy conditions, they can seek out vegetative cover on the ground below, and feed up the following morning. For this reason, birds will stream down through Sweden in incredible numbers each autumn, following all or part of the 1,850 km long peninsula before making a short crossing to Denmark. But not all choose this route, some make a crossing to Britain and Ireland… and not all of these birds make it.
This hard truth became truly apparent to me during a hard blowy morning at Beadnell Point on the Northumberland coastline. I lived in Britain for a few years. In autumn, during hard easterly or northeasterly blows, we’d frequently experience a mass arrival of birds making the risky North Sea crossing from Scandinavia — with Norway being just 550km to the northeast, a journey akin to going from Cork to Antrim.
A radar study conducted in Sweden in the mid 1970s, found that migrating redwing were flying at speeds of approximately 46 km/hr. From Beadnell, the closest Scandinavian point, as the redwing flies, is Naerbø — a small Norwegian village with a strong Viking history. Thus, this arrival of Scandinavian redwings to Northumbrian shorelines, echoes a much darker past — ruthless Viking raids on nearby Lindisfarne Island. Flying at a speed of 46km/hr these redwings would need to travel for 12 hours to reach Beadnell — no short feat over the dark, angry North Sea. But like the Vikings, redwings are tough, hardy persistent beings.
One October, I sat at the tip of Beadnell Point with my friend Gary Woodburn. It was a wild scene. We squinted out at the North Sea as the winds audibly howled and whistled through the salt-sprayed air. Overhead, an ominous, charcoal-grey sky. Below, the dark sea was a swirling choppy mess, with frothy white tips blowing violently from the tops of endless towering, pounding waves.
It was sunrise, and birds were battling these unforgiving elements, having made it through a night of fear and extreme exertion. Giant flocks of redwing pouring in from all angles, made beelines for the nearest cover — any safe spot to escape the unrelenting gales and rain they’d just endured.
Myself and Gary sat in a sheltered rocky dip out at the point and through our telescopes we observed birds arriving. This is when the grim reality of bird migration hit me. I watched several birds slowly descending, giving up their fight to survive, dropping into the North Sea. It was too much for them. Perhaps they didn’t quite have enough fuel to make it, despite the shore being just a stone’s throw away.
Birds destined for Irish shores go through the very same. The redwings we see here each winter, with their mahogany-brown backs, creamy speckled chests, white eye-stripes, and rusty red-flanks, are the lucky ones — the ones who took the right flight-lines, at the right time.
Redwings feed heavily on berries over the winter, those ripened red beads of our hedgerow hawthorns being a firm favourite. This is why the all-too-common practice of heavy-handing yearly autumn hedgerow flailing is really unhelpful to these birds… battling their way here to find a bald hedge with an empty larder.
Although all hedges need maintenance, aside from those where road safety is genuinely an issue, a two- to three-year cutting rotation plan, allowing hedges to thicken, is much better practice than yearly failings, not only for berries and redwings, but for many other species of birds, mammals, invertebrates and more.
Nature always has something to teach us. Even in these wet, cold, windy days of Irish autumn.
Irish birds are in a state of free-fall.
Liking birds isn’t just a fancy little hobby for the hippies amongst us. Loss of birds is a sign of something much bigger. It’s a sign our environment is failing.
And I think a first great step we can take in reversing that is reconnecting to nature. Getting to know the land and the characters within it. We’re much less likely to let friends disappear, once we know them, and see how wonderful they are.
So, why not eavesdrop on the spectacular arrival of these northern thrushes? Learn their calls, get out there and hear them arriving to Irish shores in the midst of the night. To hear their metallic ‘shreep’ calls [click here to hear an example], step outside after dark, particularly around late October/early November during calm, overcast nights, and think of the brilliant journeys these marvels of nature have just made as they fly over your heads.
