Another Life: I still feel bad about the ducks, even after 40 years

Even after 40 years, I still feel bad about the ducks. How could I ever have thought that raising lovely, big white birds to kill for food at 10 weeks was a proper part of the self-sufficient life?

The 10 weeks came from a book, like so much else. At that age, it said, a duckling has reached about 4 pounds, the optimum weight for execution. If you’re soft enough (it might have added ) to keep the birds around because they’re prettier than garden gnomes and a lot more fun to talk to, you’ll be wasting effort for every extra week you feed them.

Our dozen beautiful Aylesburys lined up outside the kitchen window every morning, quacking for potatoes and barley. I remember how it felt at the critical day with one tucked warmly under my arm, its wings layered in a snowy brocade, its neck stretched innocently forth.

I managed half of them (the broomstick method; you don’t need to know), leaving the rest to lay splendid eggs. A hedgehog raided one nest. A stoat ate the hatchlings from others. Suddenly we didn’t have ducks or the fun they brought us, chasing up and down the stream.

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The new winter warmth of climate change may explain some of the changes of bird migration

Aylesbury ducks are named for an English town, their breeding for white feathers and generous breasts developed since the 18th century. Wikipedia says only one pure flock remains in the UK and that the breed is “endangered” in America, so the predatory Thallabawn stoat may have much to answer for.

Meanwhile, what of Ireland's wild duck originals? I have enjoyed them most in winter, when migrant flocks of waterbirds sweep in from Iceland and Scandinavia. But a new study from BirdWatch Ireland finds them down by 40 per cent in 20 years , from more than 1.2 million to some 760,000 – "a shocking decline", as the study's authors say.

Two decades measure the Irish Wetland Bird Survey, carried out each winter by BirdWatch Ireland volunteers, often whatever the weather. Migrant ducks are just a part of it, counted along with waders, swans and geese.

The new winter warmth of climate change may explain some of the changes of bird migration. Why fly to Ireland for lakes of open water when wetlands now stay free of ice much nearer home?

In the new BirdWatch study, records from 97 lakes, rivers and coastal estuaries, diving ducks show the greatest decline. Goldeneye, pochard, tufted duck and scaup have fallen by 65 to 90 per cent.

The decline has shown up dramatically on Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, the biggest lake of these islands. Here, the ducks gather in sheltered bays at corners of the lake, diving for food and stay busily active from dusk to dawn. Once near the bottom, they use their feet to hover above the mud, foraging for aquatic insects and snails, along with seeds and plants.

Among causes of decline, researchers have listed polluting run-off from farmland. This can produce explosive growths of algae, discouraging the divers and impoverishing aquatic life at the lakebed.

It’s 20 years exactly since Egretta garzetta began breeding in Ireland. Since then they have colonised estuaries, marshes and coastal lagoons in almost every county

A study of the Lough Neagh ducks found that all four diving species feed on the aquatic larvae of midges. Larvae numbers are affected by low oxygen levels, already depleted by the lake’s farming run-off.

Not all the waterbird news is bad: 15 species are stable or increasing, among them the black-tailed godwit, a relative of the curlew, with almost a doubling of numbers since the winter counts began.

At that time, an exotic white bird, the little egret, had yet to colonise the coasts of Ireland, yet now there are at least 1,400 of them.

It’s 20 years exactly since Egretta garzetta began breeding in Ireland, two pairs seen adding nests to a heronry (of our native birds) in a woodland on the Blackwater in Co Cork. Since then they have colonised estuaries, marshes and coastal lagoons in almost every county.

Their dramatic expansion from southern Europe has paced the milder winters of climate change. Long used to seeking winter warmth in north Africa, they began to stay in Europe in the 1950s. Then, with numbers growing in France and Spain, they dispersed northwards along the Atlantic coasts, breeding in Brittany, Normandy and then across the Channel in English estuaries. The first chicks appeared there in 1996, a year ahead of those in Cork.

Egrets have surprised and delighted many people as they wade the shallows, shuffling their yellow toes to disturb little fish. Intent on the hunt for food, they may seem a bolder sort of bird. More people are drawn to the natural world of wetlands, but BirdWatch Ireland cites disturbance from people and their dogs as one big pressure on wintering waterbirds as they try to fatten up for their return migration.