A true champion of the wild

When we read, in the life of some outstanding naturalist, that "his interest in nature developed in boyhood", we fit the lad into his landscape of birds and animals as if such enthusiasm were, indeed, the most natural thing in the world. But a closer look is likely to find a less general class of youngster: one from a comfortable, middle-class home, sure of his place in university, and with a naturalist grandad or someone else to encourage him.

In the past Irish record of naturalists, there is further social selection: we find the sons of Belfast linen merchants, of Protestant professionals, clergymen and colonials, all with "residences" rather than houses. Most modest in the line of high achievers, and naturally my favourite, was a Dublin newspaperman, Charles Moffat, but even he entered Trinity College at 16.

What we don't find are any plain people of rural Ireland, in whose culture, for all sorts of reasons, nature and its study has not been highly prized. This gives a warm significance to yesterday's conferring, in UCC, of the honorary degree of Master of Science upon Patrick Smiddy of Ballykenneally, Ballymacoda. It celebrates not only an exceptional individual, but an era of steady enlightenment in public regard for nature.

In rural Co Cork of the 1960s, the young Pat Smiddy's fascination with birds was a passion all his own. Enraptured by the swirling winter flocks of golden plover and lapwing at the estuary half-a-mile from his house, he was also enthralled, at 12 years old, to watch spoonbills sifting the shallows.

His father worked for a road haulier; it was the Ireland of leaving school at 14 and hoping not to emigrate. Smiddy joined a local cabinet-maker and earned his first pair of binoculars. He still had no idea that watching birds was an organised enthusiasm with a whole science behind it, so that discovering a branch of the Irish Wildbird Conservancy (now BirdWatch Ireland) just 25 miles away in Cork must have felt like taking to the air.

The 1970s was the decade of the IWC's own take-off, with the Cork wader estuaries a special focus of excitement. Smiddy joined in the first great wetland counts organised by Clive Hutchinson and trained for a ringer's permit. His work at the mist-nets drew him closer to the science of migration and population dynamics. The Cork coastline nets new rarities almost every year, so that he became an expert on identification, a skill that later brought him a decade as secretary of the Irish Rare Birds Committee.

In 1980, at 30, the Wildlife Service had the sense to recruit him as what is now called a Conservation Ranger. This needed a crash course in mammals, part of which was a close reading of An Irish Beast Book, James Fairley's fascinating natural history of the island's furred wildlife. It introduced him to a whole new tradition of naturalists (beginning with Arthur Stringer, the 18th century huntsman) and, above all, to the value of writing things down.

"Unless research is published," insisted Fairley, "it might just as well never have been undertaken in the vast majority of cases." Smiddy took this powerfully to heart, as an inveterate note-taker and record keeper since his boyhood days of counting (but never collecting) eggs in nests. From 1982 onwards, an extraordinary output of observations and papers flowed into the pages of scientific journals, ranging ever more widely as his fieldwork engaged with new species. Many of them dealt with whales, dolphins and leathery turtles washed ashore in east Cork and west Waterford. He was the man to ring, and would take off from Ballymacoda on a stormy winter's night in case an interesting specimen might be washed back out to sea.

As his reputation grew, he was sought out to work with scientists at UCC - ornithologist John O'Halloran, cetacean zoologist Simon Berrow, mammalogist Patrick Sleeman. He learned the importance of the small: the fleas on bats and in birds' nests; the barnacles on whales. In 20 years, his scientific publication list runs to more than 130 articles, most of them the traditional naturalist's descriptions and records of occurrence, but moving also into the number-crunching studies of modern ecology.

His job satisfaction still connects, however, with the original thrill of stalking graceful water-birds along the leafy creeks of Cork. The spoonbills of the 1960s have been succeeded by the extraordinary invasion of little egrets from Europe, and the steady build-up of their breeding colony to this year's 40 pairs.

Pat Smiddy has been their chief guardian and scientific chronicler. "While some exaggerate the significance of their efforts," wrote Fairley, "others, through too modest an assessment or through sloth or procrastination, never transform their findings to print - and the knowledge is lost for ever." The boy from Ballymacoda has turned out modest enough - but slothful, never.

Here in Co Mayo, meanwhile, other deep enthusiasms are bringing amateurs and professionals to a major conference on the county's landscape and settlement history. Mayo Through the Millennia, to be held in Hotel Westport next Friday to Sunday (October 6th to 8th), is a joint promotion by the county's archaeological and historical societies, backed by the Heritage Council. It will draw together the often dramatic threads of current research into the county's past and relate them to community effort in presenting and protecting local heritage.

Since the discovery and development of the Ceide Fields as Europe's largest Neolithic landscape, Mayo has been the focus of intensive research by archaeologists, palaeobotanists, ecologists, geophysicists and historians at centres such as Clare Island, Croagh Patrick and Mayo Abbey. At the same time, more and more community groups are looking for guidance in field studies and "heritage" projects with a spinoff in tourism; many will contribute to the conference exhibition.

This summer saw the opening of an Environmental Research Centre at Belderrig, near Ceide, and its director, archaeologist Dr Seamus Caulfield, is setting the overall conference theme - that of "locating knowledge within its own landscape." The conference website is www.mayoheritage. com and the registration secretary is Marian Irwin, e-mail: info@mayoheritage.com