Why we chose a wind farm over a gold mine

ANOTHER LIFE:MUCH BETTER LATE than never, the autumn sun spills over the ridge at breakfast time, dissolving the rim of the mountain in an incandescent blaze.

It sets each grazing ewe in a golden penumbra and picks out long-forgotten lazy beds in the fields running up to the commonage fence. They are like wrinkles in an unkind photograph - a reminder, if we needed it, of the hillside's bleaker past.

I've been wondering how the sun will shine through the blades of the 10 wind turbines now proposed for these sloping fields - whether, like sufferers from epilepsy who must avoid flashlight photography lighting on television, I shall want to look away from the morning show of stroboscopy (is that a word?).

The young entrepreneur who came to explain it all to us the other morning, smoothing his maps across the table, was himself all alight with enthusiasm. He reminded me of another young man who came knocking almost 20 years ago, an exploration geologist working for the gold company - wind-tanned, energetic, immediately likeable. He took me for a hike, pointing out glints in reefs of quartzite as if I should be as pleased as he was.

The company got as far as drilling (the machine all too visible and audible across the top of my word processor) and there were rumoured assays of nine ounces to the tonne in the bedrock running down to the sea. It went away eventually, banished by consensus on the landscape's alternative worth. We've been expecting it back ever since, when the price of gold and the politics were right. But when another enterprise sought prospecting licences recently (for 135 townlands, no less) the Green Party's Minister for Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan, kept the faith.

So there's our ridge and hillside, Mweelrea's northern paw above the shore, an unremarkable slope of rushy grass and field-banks, littered with glacial rocks - and now worth millions to the world beyond the mountains. The wind scheme (by Organic Power of Cork) will take a great deal of money - a vast, linked enterprise involving a second wind farm in a lonely inland valley and a pumped-storage system in a mountain beyond that.

Are we appalled? Not nearly as much as some people think we should be. A long time ago, when I had a features desk in The Irish Timesand Ethna was editing Technology Ireland, we each gave ready platforms to proponents of alternative energy. If wind power wants our backyard now, it beats a private goldmine hands down.

We can even see the point of the location, tucked away in a coastal cul-de-sac miles from any robust annoyance. The line of 10 turbines would be high above the shore but still below the profile of the ridge and rooted in rocky, mineral soil at the further reaches of the fields ("we don't do peatland," as our visitor put it). One of the turbines would be straight up the hill from us, where the stream condenses from its broad pocket of bog.

Will the windmills spoil the view? They would certainly change what we see from the gate, the wild and empty space we came to. But much of this has already been tamed by the march of new houses, and the turbines would probably discourage any more.

Will there be noise? Noise needs wind to carry it, and rare winds from the land are mostly blocked by the ridge itself. But yes, there would be noise - from machinery widening the road, from all the construction up the hill.

After months when we cower behind our trees, the turbines themselves might settle into our lives like the rumble of surf at the channel: it will be up to us whether we mind or not. The turbines might even be beautiful - a sort of whirling Greek chorus attending the great bulk of Mweelrea, the old, bald king. And we can always look the other way, out to sea.

All this has set me thinking of Tim Robinson across in Connemara, and his anguished protest a decade ago at plans to put turbines on the cliffs of Inishmaan - a wanton violation, as he saw it, of one of the world's unique landscapes. He has just published the second volume of his great trilogy on Connemara, a chronicle of topography, folklore and local history as fine and beguiling literature. This book (Connemara: The Last Pool of Darkness, published by Penguin Ireland, €25), deals, as it happens, with the coast straight across the bay, from the mouth of Killary Harbour to the lighthouse on Slyne Head.

It contains an absolute gem of Robinson's writing, a chapter of dizzying intellectual excitement and soaring style, all arising from the ruins of Marconi's wireless station that, a century ago, sent photons rushing to America in Morse code from the margins of Roundstone Bog. The transmitting aerial wires, he tells us, were carried on eight wooden masts 210ft high, an array that stretched for a third of a mile out into the bog.

EYE ON NATURE

While holidaying near Westport we found some very small crabs cohabiting with mussels in their shells.

William Bell, Sandyford, Dublin 18

They were pea crabs, Pinnotheres

pisum, which live inside a number of mollusc shells, including mussels, and feed on the strings of food collected by the bivalve.

In a field near our house there were 20-30 cows and a bull, lying in the grass. Perched between the ears of the bulls was a large magpie, which seemed to dig deep into his ears, while the bull remained motionless. The magpie then repeated the exercise on each of the cows, which (except for one) didn't appear at all irritated.

Ursula Budd, Corr na Mona, Co Galway

The magpie was picking parasites or insects out of the ears of the cattle.

I found a dead pygmy shrew in my back garden and later another in the front garden. They had no visible markings of being attacked.

Breandán Ó Braoin, Rath Eanaigh, Baile Átha Cliath

Pygmy shrews can die of starvation if they cannot find food within three hours. The recent downpours could have deprived them of food.

While fishing on Brittas Lake, we saw a white swallow being mobbed by other swallows.

Denis Liston, Bray, Co Wicklow

Michael Viney welcomes observations at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo; e-mail: viney@anu.ie. Include a postal address.