The caged birds that inspired my 'Irish Times' debut

ANOTHER LIFE:The sight of goldfinches for sale in a Dublin market began more than 50 years of writing

The flight of birds across the hillside is now sparse but more eventful, as the local finches and starlings sift about in flocks, the better to find food and keep a heads-up for predators. Among them, I assume, are the goldfinches we gloried in all summer as they raised young on the acre. As late as September one cock was still uttering his delicious, swivelling song from the hawthorn.

When the wind went north last month we took out the feeders and opened the big bag of peanuts from Argentina. Days on, as I write, the tubes hang almost untouched from the oaks: even the garden tits must feel they have wild seeds enough.

But goldfinches will be back as the last of the wayside thistles are scalped, until perhaps a dozen are flashing about the trees.

I remember the great pleasure, more than a decade ago, when the first of these finches came to the nuts – a thrill shared at thousands of Ireland’s kitchen windows as a species most at home in a weedy countryside progressively discovered human bounty. There have even been queries to Eye on Nature from innocents dazzled by the brilliant colours: what exotic visitors could they be?

The great change in the bird’s fortunes can be judged from its profile in an early classic of Irish ornithology, The Birds of Ireland, from 1900. “The goldfinch,” Richard Ussher and Robert Warren began, “is a well-known bird in every part of Ireland from which bird-catchers have not driven it, though they have done this for miles around our larger towns and even in many country districts the species has sensibly diminished.”

The popularity of goldfinches as caged birds, many for export to the UK, persisted for decades. In 1930 a young Dáil deputy for Dublin South, Seán Lemass, was resisting the passage of the first Wild Birds Protection Act. It would, he said, bring greater misery to the 300 people who made a precarious living from birdcatching. “If the economic situation becomes better,” he went on, “we can then afford to indulge in luxury legislation of this kind.”

At the end of the 1950s, on a brief visit to Ireland, I was taken around Dublin by a friend. The tour included a Sunday-morning visit to the old bird market in what was once called Petty Canon Alley, later Canon Street, within bell-ringing chimes of St Patrick’s Cathedral. This cramped cul-de-sac, lined with cages holding, all too probably, some goldfinches and linnets along with canaries and budgerigars, was crowded with men in hats and caps who, in retrospective fancy, could have been waiting to join Flann O’Brien in the pub.

The visit moved me to a poem, which began: “There would be something doubly wrong / About a market selling birds in cages / That viewed the hills or other birds / Free to their own trees and refuges. / This market is itself a cell confined / By overpeering sculleries . . .” I was twentysomething, and The Irish Times kindly paid me £10 for it (or was it 10s 6d?) – my debut in these pages, in 1958.

History, local and natural, continues to inspire slim volumes produced with much personal zest and dedication and deserving some notice at this season.

Connemara's Walled Gardens: Clifden and Environs is by Gary Brow, a former surgeon, who, retiring to the west to grow vegetables for his family, was shown a "secret" walled garden in a local forest. With camera and maps, he explored dozens more among Connemara's old estates, many still inviting a loving resurrection. (It costs €12 in hardback from connemarawalledgardens@ gmail.com.)

The Making of Meath describes a landscape that is anything but plain. Its high esker ridges, boglands and “kame and kettle” topography, legacies of the Ice Age, framed the early environment of Newgrange and Tara and the rise of Irish farming. Its author, Robert Meehan, is an accomplished geologist and native of the county. (It costs €20 in hardback from Meath County Council.)

Habitats, species and biodiversity are given engaging form in Mayo’s Wild Things and Places, prepared by the county’s heritage officer, Deirdre Cunningham, An Taisce’s green-schools officer, Aisling Wheeler, and the artist Naomi McBride. (I edited it,and I introduce it.) Aimed first at schools and community groups, its guide to the local natural world should have wide appeal. (It costs €20 in paperback from Mayo County Council, heritage@mayococo.ie.)

In Co Tyrone, the teacher and wildlife enthusiast Stephen Colton is alert to every twitch of feather and leaf around his primary school in Dromore. Conversations with Nature collects warm and informative pieces he has written over the years, together with some spirited drawings.

He is also keen on folklore; I value his revelation of the origin of the phrase “pissed as a newt” – a reference not, it seems, to the amphibian but to the low tolerance for alcohol of the Inuit peoples of the Arctic. (It costs £8.99 in paperback from shops around Dromore and in Omagh.)

Eye on Nature Your observations and questions

On November 23rd I spotted a pair of well-fed waxwings feeding on cotoneaster berries in my garden. Is it unusual to see them this far west, and does this mean a hard winter?

Edel Ward Partree, Co Mayo

On November 24th a large flock of waxwings (about 30) visited my garden to gorge on red berries.

Mary Regan Greencastle, Co Donegal

Waxwings were seen in Kerry and Clare early in November. They move here from Scandinavia when berries are scarce there.

At low tide I watched common gulls dropping mussel shells on to the sea wall at Seapoint Dart station to break them open, as crows waited below, trying to rob the bounty. The juveniles were copying the adults but dropping them from too low a height to smash the shell.

Michael Walsh Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin

At Doonbeg golf course, in Co Clare, I came across a stoat in a stand-off with four rooks. After a short while it retreated into dense cover, whereupon the rooks flew away.

John McMahon Clontarf, Dublin

I saw a male albino pheasant on the road near my home. It had completely white plumage and the distinctive red cheeks.

Adrian Briscoe Platin, Co Meath

Michael Viney welcomes observations at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo, or email viney@anu.ie. Please include a postal address