Birding
Viewing birds, bird watching or simply "birding," attracts an estimate 100 million adults worldwide. Along Ireland's rugged West Coast, home to Stella Maris Country House Hotel, birders are rewarded with a variety of species throughout the year. Rare sightings supplement the more common birds found in the region at different times of the year.
In addition, the mellifluous sounds of birds coming and going add another dimension to the lovely pastime of birding.
The Mayo Branch of Birdwatch Ireland, www.BirdWatchMayo.org, offers an updated site that identifies birds seen within the county.
One Stella Maris guest, John Fishwick, was so moved by the experience he and his wife shared in 2010 that he wrote the following article for a birding journal in England:
A Short Break on the North Mayo Coast
By John Fishwick
Every now and again my wife and I feel the need to seek out a place of tranquility in which to rebalance life and recharge batteries. Often I will do some casual bird watching whilst relaxing.
Recently we found a spectacular haven on the North Mayo coast of Southern Ireland. The bird watching was so special I felt the need to write this short article.
Generally speaking, Ireland is under-recorded as an ornithological destination and North Mayo is no different.
We traveled in early May being fortunate enough to dodge the ash cloud from the volcanic eruption in Iceland. Out intention had been to walk the North Mayo coast path (not that any such byway existed!).
On arrival at Knock Airport we set out for Downpatrick Head, a granite stack towering above pristine clean Atlantic blue gray swells. Almost the first birds that we encountered were a pair of choughs and they seemed to be relatively common along the coastal fields. Skylarks, meadow pipits and wheatears were in abundance and the cliff edges were full of nesting kittiwakes, auks and fulmars. Burrows were present on the cliff edges and our hosts confirmed that puffins were quite numerous although we did not see any during our trip. In places the coastal thrift cushions seemed almost a foot deep.
This coastline faces north and the indigenous rocks are volcanic folded by tectonic movements with inlets of clean white sand. Off shore lie rocky islands holding international important breeding colonies of leach’s petrel and storm petrel. The weather scuds in at speed bringing squalls of driving rain to last 10 minutes followed by a return to bright sun and blue skies.
On of our mot memorable sights was watching the weather rush in over the thousand islands of Clew Bay, the weather was so much tamer and flattened out by the time it reaches Wiltshire (England).
We were fortunate to stay in the wonderful small dining hotel, Stella Maris Country House Hotel, an old coast guard station where a stream enters Bunatrahir Bay from behind the shingle bank. The foreshore held whimbrels, dunlins, oystercatchers and lingering just off shore a great northern diver in full summer plumage. The meadows behind and around the hotel were not cut annually and still host corncrake which our hosts assured us could be heard in the evenings, although we were unlucky during our stay. Beside the hotel was a loose scrub where I was delighted to find a flock of tree sparrows. There were a number of surprises and a few disappointments.
As in the mainland U.K., the cuckoo is in serious decline. Hirudines are very numerous, especially sand martins and swallows, but house martins and swifts were much scarcer. Willow and sedge warblers were numerous, but chiffchaffs scarce. It struck me as being odd that some birds rather than others chose to migrate to the very edge of the European continent.
The surrounding gently rolling hills were covered in heath, bracken and sphagnum peat bog with machair in places. The hills rolled gently to 2,000 feet, the bog was dotted with sparse finds of louse wort, common spotted orchid, cotton grasses and sun dew. This looks perfect harrier country, yet rapters were scarce and we saw no buzzards at all. Perhaps here they have not had the respite from game keepers that has occurred in the U.K.
Everywhere peat is cut and drying, sometimes mechanically and sometimes by hand. Streams meander through the peat beds and dippers were common. There is little shelter on the upland hills and bogs, the haunt of raven and hooded cow.
We were also fortunate enough to see fox and a surprisingly large Irish mountain hare.
We felt we had the countryside to ourselves although we were nominally following a coastal footpath; in reality there was no such byway and we saw no one other than a local cutting peat during the whole of our walk. He seemed to think it a strange question when we asked if we were trespassing.
In the villages people have time to stop and talk, and the locals were amenable to hitch hikers showing typical Irish hospitality and generosity.
