Notes from Lower Lough Erne

Day 1.

After saying goodbye to my Antrim B&B host and her assorted animals, I made my way back to Belfast this morning. From there I caught a bus that took me west towards Lower Lough Erne - the fifth and final Curlew LIFE site on my itinerary. The lough is one of two connected bodies of water that bulge out from the River Erne, like a snake after a couple of over-sized snacks. Confusingly - or at least confusing to me - Lower Lough Erne is to the north, while the smaller Upper Lough is to the south (but further upriver). The Upper Lough is a maze of more than 150 islands. At times the wind can be strong enough to make it feel like the sea if you happen to be out in a boat. The weather in this part of Northern Ireland is notoriously wet, and several of these islands remain vitally important for curlews.

The bus dropped me off in a place called Lisnarick, County Fermanagh, a few miles from the campsite where I was due to spend the night. Thankfully it was a warm and sunny afternoon, and despite being weighed down by a couple of heavy bags I began to enjoy the walk. Denmark were playing Belgium in the Euros and before long the combination of hot sun and dramatic radio commentary started going to my head. The underdogs, Denmark, didn’t quite manage to get a result, which is just as well since the long walk had turned me into a fervent viking and in my delirious state I think I’d have probably gone completely berserk and done myself an injury celebrating. At least Thijs (the RSPB’s Belgian Curlew LIFE Project Officer at Insh Marshes) would be feeling happy. I paused at the final whistle, took a few breaths and came to my senses before completing the final 50 or so metres.

At the campsite, I tried to make sense of a baffling map that I found inside an envelope pinned to the door of the closed reception, inside an envelope addressed to “Meryln Striver”. I knew from numerous previous name misspellings that it was meant for me, but thought for a moment about what someone called Meryln Striver would actually be like. I quickly settled on an American ‘soccer mom’ (though I don’t really claim to know exactly what one is). Before long I worked out where I was meant to pitch my tent and set about the task. Five minutes later I was sitting inside, eating some peanut butter and bread and enjoying that lovely ‘me and my tent against the world’ feeling, when I got a call from one of the local RSPB wardens, Fionnbarr Cross. Fionnbarr had agreed to row me across to one of the more important small islands for breeding waders on Lower Lough Erne.

We arrived at the banks of the lough at about 9pm. Fionnbarr, whose safari hat and beard gives him a friendly ‘Indiana Jones cross Snufkin’ (Snufkin from the Moomins, that is) aura, had to retrieve the oars of the little rowing boat from somewhere among the bushes where he’d hidden them. Flies whirred after him in the muggy summer air. The tiny island we were heading to - just a five or ten minute row away - once had a single farmhouse on it, but is now managed by the RSPB and rented out to a farmer whose few cattle provide just the right amount of grazing pressure needed for wading birds to thrive. Usually only the farmer and conservation workers like Fionnbarr are allowed on the island, so I felt incredibly lucky. The weather was perfect for a night of recording, with virtually no wind. Upon arrival, we were greeted by a redshank loudly patrolling the shoreline (probably guarding its young) and Common Sandpipers zipping back and forth just above the water. There was something mesmerising about the contrast between the flat calm surface and their sharp, penetrating little whistles. A curlew flew into sight from the apex of the island, and then circled back on itself. We followed at a distance. It was perhaps harder to focus on recording here than at any other point on my journey. With the sun beginning to set, the island hummed with life. Half of it was a sonic hum - provided by curlews, oystercatchers, sandpipers, snipe, redshank and various species of gull - and half an indescribable ‘growing hum’ of plant life; grasses, sedges, orchids and other wild flowers. Fionnbarr stooped down to photograph a particularly pleasing orchid.

Approaching one end of the island, a screaming colony of Black-Headed Gulls helped me come to my senses. Time to focus on sound recording! Fionnbarr and I took turns using the parabolic dish and listening on my headphones. Redshanks dipped and circled around us, oystercatchers called and flew straight and direct (as is their habit), and curlews kept their eyes on us at a distance. Sometimes they’d let out a classic ‘curlew’ call, and sometimes their equally distinctive ‘low whaup’ or alarm calls. Snipe were drumming over the water, little bodies tumbling down with the last of the dusk. As we approached the ruins of the farmhouse that once stood at the centre of the island, a solitary raven (a species that predates curlew chicks and eggs and is thriving in these parts) let out a few ominous croaks.

Beyond the shore of the lake, in all directions, tractors methodically went about silage cutting. Just like at home in Orkney, farmers here work through the night in the summer. While curlews have probably long abandoned these perilous silage fields, they are to some degree ‘site faithful’, meaning they will occasionally return to the same site for many years, even if they fail to fledge any young. While my experiences in Glenwherry (where a farmer had agreed to delay cutting until the chicks were out of his field) had given me hope, tonight, with tractors rumbling all around us, the island felt like one of the last refuges for curlews. Hopefully it can be a launching pad too.

It was past midnight when Fionnbarr rowed us back to the mainland. Pipistrelle bats were flitting among the bushes and the sandpiper’s whistles seemed sharper than ever. I sat there listening to the sound of the oars pushing and pulling through the still, sleepy water. They may be few, but richly biodiverse places still exist across Britain and Northern Ireland, and we must do everything we can to protect them.

Day 2.

After about two hours of sleep, I woke up at four am in my tent and headed out wearily to join the RSPB’s Amy Burns and Brad Robson on an early morning bird survey of two of the lough’s other tiny islands. Amy seems to be something of a morning person, so I tried my best to match her energy levels. In reality I was feeling like a bear that had just been prodded out of hibernation (I’m pretty sure Brad was feeling the same). Lifejackets on, we climbed into a motorboat and Amy took the wheel. The sunrise that greeted us was, if anything, even more beautiful than the sunset Fionnbarr and I had witnessed just a handful of hours before. I had the sudden feeling that I was living in a world where the sun is always just above or below the horizon. In 10 minutes or so we reached the first of the two islands and Amy and Brad climbed ashore to do their survey. I stayed in the boat, so as not to disturb their work, and waited with my microphone in case any birds came my way (and tried not to fall asleep). By the time they returned about twenty minutes later though, not much had happened besides a shoreline visit from the island’s inquisitive cows. Their breath formed clouds in the cold morning air and travelled out to meet me.

We headed on to another even tinier island, where, as Brad informed me with a hint of pride, the only known inland colony of Sandwich Terns breed alongside Black-headed Gulls. The boat stopped and - due to tiredness or perhaps overconfidence - I strode out, slipped on an algae-covered rock and went crashing into the lough, flailing around desperately as I tried to keep my parabolic dish and microphone clear of the water. Thankfully nothing was permanently damaged, but if you’ve ever seen ‘Grape lady falls’ - well…it wasn’t far off it (thanks to Brad and Amy for not laughing until I did). The sound and the smell on the island was overwhelming. I squelched about in my waterlogged boots, staring up at the white vortex of birds and trying to pick out the small number of terns from the gulls that outnumbered them roughly twenty to one.

Later in the afternoon, and back in dry socks, I sat down and talked to Fionnbarr and a local farmer called Tom Irvine who now works for the RSPB as a machinery operator. Tom is one of those people who have miraculously retained their boyishness, even though he’s probably in his fifties. Wearing a wooly hat and with an irrepressible twinkle in his eyes, he explained how his involvement with the RSPB has given him a renewed love for wildlife. I was especially interested in talking with Tom given that he’s grown up on a family farm in Fermanagh and witnessed first-hand the sudden changes in land use that were ushered in during the 1970s and 80’s. Suddenly hedges were cut to enlarge fields, boggy areas were ‘improved’ (i.e. drained), and habitats were lost- all in order to accommodate greater productivity. It was a new world compared to what his father and grandfather had known. Tom sees his involvement with the RSPB as something of “a penance” for the time that he disregarded wildlife as a younger man, caught up in era of intensification.

After listening to Tom’s story, I can’t help but feel that his testimony reveals a major part of what has happened to curlews across the UK and Ireland. The curlew crisis is now, but the first seeds were sown in the 70’s and 80’s when rapid changes to land use spelled disaster for many farmland birds. Since curlews tend to be site faithful, some farmers have continued to see a slowly dwindling number of adults, even though they’re consistently failing to raise chicks. Now that those adults (which can live to the age of thirty or more) are dying off, curlew numbers are falling off a cliff edge. The crisis we see now is the visible tip of an iceberg that goes back decades.

Like everywhere else I’ve been, the challenges of the job seem to breed solidarity and close bonds between the RSPB staff in Northern Ireland. This is vital because although it’s easy to talk about the ‘nice’ parts of conservation work - the many sunrises and being outdoors among wildlife - what’s not so often talked about are the demanding hours, and the degree of personal responsibility that people feel. Any job can become all-encompassing when you really care. Especially for those working on the ground, we also need to bear in mind that these are people witnessing the frontline of what can seem like a depressing and sometimes losing battle to protect nature. I have massive admiration and gratitude for all the RSPB staff I’ve met on my travels - without exception good people who care deeply about their work.

Day 3.

On my final day in County Fermanagh, Fionnbarr and his wife Michèle took me back to the lough for a walk and a swim along its banks. Among the trees, we came across buildings that date back to the 16th or 17th centuries, when as part of the plantation era, Irish-owned land was confiscated by the English Crown and the land colonised and built on by settlers from Great Britain. Not far away, on Boa Island, Fionnbarr had earlier shown me the ancient stone Janus figures - far older (thought to be eighth century) and believed to represent a Celtic deity. Curlews were here during the plantations, just as they were here when somebody carved the Janus stones (maybe that person heard curlews crying out un the air as they chipped away at the rock). The next decade will probably decide whether they remain for future generations.

Before long it was time to catch the bus back to Belfast, and the boat onwards to Scotland. Everywhere I’ve gone on these curlew travels, at least one person has taken me under their wing and gone out of their way to help. Thank you once more to the RSPB for making these trips possible - and especially to those of you working for curlews on the ground.

Notes from Antrim Plateau

The Curlew Sounds Project