A heady mix of wildlife richness – Paul Clements on Rathlin Island

Twenty-five shags greet the arrival of the Spirit of Rathlin on its 40-minute journey across the Sea of Moyle from Ballycastle on the north Antrim coast. Four gannets soar in a flypast across the bow while a bunch of eider ducks bob on the waves. As the boat docks in Church Bay, this welcome to the L-shaped Rathlin Island captures the genius loci of what is an internationally important wildlife sanctuary and a busy island with the sea a constant backdrop.

People are drawn to the quietude and slow pace of Rathlin life, but for those who visit “Seabird City” at the west lighthouse, it is far from serene. This tumbling and deafening aerial tumult, referred to by Victorian naturalists as “whirring multitudes”, is a chaotic marine crossroads and an avian assault on the senses. Thousands of birds scream and screech with acrobatic twists and turns, crisscrossing above the water, some shooting like white arrows.

The “big five” colonies that breed here from spring to summer are a mixed sociable party of guillemots, razorbills, puffins, fulmars and kittiwakes.

A decade ago, they numbered around 145,000, but estimates now put the collective seabird figure at a quarter of a million.

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Visitors love the comical puffins, dubbed the clowns of the sea, although ferrets and rats are causing them a problem and a scheme is under way to have the predators removed within the next three years. The endearing guillemots, who have commandeered the roof of a sea stack and whitewashed it, stand on densely packed cliff edges or sit on eggs, while kittiwakes, with their snowy-white heads, wedge on perilously narrow guano-splattered ledges.

This summer, interlopers joined them when a pair of eccentric oystercatchers made a home in their midst, becoming known to ornithologists as “urban pioneers”.

While the bird population is growing, so too is the human population with more and more families enticed by island life. For the first time in many years there has been a sharp increase in the number of people living on Rathlin which has stabilised at around 150, with 14 children attending the local primary school.

Sixty years ago, the boats used were small half-deckers or open fishing vessels. As well as carrying passengers, the cargo also comprised livestock and even small cars. It was a dangerous journey across the gnarly waves of slough-na-mara (hollow of the sea) as Rathlin has the strongest tides of any Irish island, which is one reason it has so many shipwrecks. When they arrived, the passengers kissed the ground giving thanks for reaching their destination safely.

The island is a tangle of townland names: Carravinally, Mullindress, Sloaknacalliagh, Roonivoolin, Craigmacagan. On a bike ride the route shifts between traffic-free single-track roads, rough paths and challenging gradients. A sense of history permeates the countryside with farmstead ruins, abandoned potato rigs, a derelict forge, a roofless kelp (seaweed) house and lime kilns. The diversity of the landscape unfolds in a patchwork of hilly woodland, heath and moorland, sand and shingle. A sign warns, “Beware: Chickens on patrol”.

There are numerous sea caves, tiny ports and nooks, known as ínéans leading between cliffs down to the sea. Rathlin also boasts a “lake district” on its southern side on the way to Rue Point; at one time goods were smuggled in this area, while today seals, known in folklore as “selchies”, bask on the rocks in a carefree fashion. Eleven miles of turbulent North Channel water divides the island from Scotland and if the day is clear, you may make out the long arm of the Mull of Kintyre. Northwest are the islands of Islay and Jura in the Inner Hebrides where George Orwell wrote his final novel, 1984.

In summer Rathlin is awash with a heady mix of colourful botanical richness. Hedges explode with the cardinal red of fuchsia, the bushy purple shrubs of hebe and the large white trumpet flowers of bindweed. Tall stands of ferns, bracken, and gorse line verges along with Scots lovage, zigzag clover, meadowsweet and common spotted orchids, while red valerian sprouts from walls.

Day trippers bring business and vibrancy but after they have left, Rathliners have the island to themselves when the interplay of ethereal light creates a languorousness. As the waves roll on to the beach, the setting sun adds a pink luminescence stealing across the white chalk cliffs. Sit outside the Lazy Bird café to hear the strains of the resident harpist, taste the salt on the wind and drink in the peaceful hum of a beguiling setting.

But listen carefully and you may hear a screeching sound, somewhere between the long wail of a woman and the mournful cry of a seal. Some believe this to be the banshee, an ancestral spirit thought to have an affinity with the island who appears in three guises as a young woman, a stately matron, or a ragged old hag. It might, of course, transpire to be the “kitt-ee-wayke” call ringing in your ears, or even the high-pitched keening of Cnoc-na-Scriedlin, the Hill of the Screaming.