Return to Toe Head

It's been a long time coming, but I have finally managed to return to West Cork. I lived there, in the Lake Lodge (which looked a lot smarter then than it does now), from 1989 until 1992 and established the wildlife garden and wildlife reserve around Liss Ard House (now Hotel), near Skibbereen. In my mid-twenties, I was ready to learn a huge amount about the natural world and was just about equipped with the knowledge and skills I needed to do so. Landing amidst the comparative wildness of West Cork, meeting otters, reedbeds, carr woodlands, bog bean and seeing huge alms (which I had to fell) was a wonderful education that I draw upon all the time to this day. The people I worked with, like Ken Bond (one of the best lepidopterists in Europe), Paddy Sleeman, John Early, Declan O'Donnell and academics in all the Irish universities were an inspiration. I met fascinating people such as Jim Turrell (who created the Irish Sky Garden at Liss Ard), learned masses from my boss Mike Hayes and mixed with a hugely eclectic set of folk who passed through the house and garden.

My old home is now a men's project. The interior has been stripped back to bare walls. I bet the bathroom is not bright pink anymore! Shedless blokes gather here to make bird boxes and sets of shelves ...

This is the entrance to Liss Ard House Hotel. But it did not always look like this ...

... in fact, before I got my hands on it, it was a field, and I did this to it:

The photo above is taken from almost precisely the same spot as the one of the entrance today. In the picture from 1990 you can just make out the trees I planted. I used a 10lb mattock to plant each one, each tree required three swings of the mattock, then the head of the mattock would be used to thump the sods back in place around the tree. It took ages to plant the 10,000 - 20,000 trees around the estate. I could not wear gloves as the mattock would slip, so had to work bare-handed. This meant blisters and torn skin so I bathed my hands in white spirit in order to toughen the skin. But every aching back, blister and pulled muscle was worth it so that I could return nearly 30 years later and see all these trees growing so well. The woodland is just as I wanted it to be; dense, wet, full of young trees and dead fallen trees. The bluebells have come in, yellow flag grows where I blocked the field drains with willow wands and it is full of life of every description.

This is the Signal Tower at Toe Head. It was one of a chain of towers built in 1804 or 1805 to warn of French invasion. The French never came and after Bonaparte's final defeat in 1815 they quickly fell into disuse. However, when I used to visit Toe Head a lot, i knew a lady who had been brought up in the Tower, so I know this one as Sheila's Tower. Her father moved them into the Tower as they had no house and they scraped a living farming and labouring around Gortacrossig (the hamlet nearby), kept livestock in the ground floor and lived above. But threats of invasion were not over. In 1942, Sheila's father joined the Coastal Watch whose job it was to make sure that combatant forces in the "Emergency" (or World War 2) did not land on neutral Ireland. One of their jobs was to build signs that would be visible from the air, telling bomber crews that the land was Ireland. The wrote in large letters, in white painted rocks placed on raised banks. They are still visible today:

With thanks to http://eiremarkings.org

It was a bit more visible in 1943 ... but not much. So imagine you are in a Dornier 17, a Heinkel 111, a RAF Lancaster or a USAAF B17 Flying Fortress and you are trying to work out where in Europe you are so that you and your young crew can survive the night. Even if you do see this as you fly through the wild Atlantic night, how is some young man from Dortmund, Leeds or Pittsburgh going to know what "EIRE" means?

The Stag Rocks, just off Toe Head, where the bulk carrier "Kowloon Bridge" lies wrecked. She went down in a huge storm in 1986, having left Bantry Bay where she had sought shelter. The bow was caved in by the storm and the crew abandoned ship, she then foundered on the Stags releasing all her bunker fuel, iron ore cargo and a host of noxious toxins.

But these days, Toe Head is better known for being on the "Wild Atlantic Way" coastal route, for the wild flowers, inspiring views and for its great bird life. The rare chough, a member of the crow family, is a real favourite of mine and it was lovely to photograph them nesting in the Tower. Toe Head is also a great place to spot vagrant birds. I have seen hoopoe, purple heron, pied flycatcher and American robin around Toe Head. There was little sign of the peregrines that used to bring me such delight, but I get great views of them in Bracknell: times have changed for the better in that way at least.

Chough, their lively zipping, buzzing calls are so unlike the other crows.

Chough flight is graceful, balletic: their long primary feathers are more like adornments than purposeful wings.

I was also rewarded with a bonus hen harrier!

The hen harrier was a lovely surprise. These birds are usually only seen in southern Ireland in winter. This female was hunting hard - so maybe she was breeding? I'll just have to go back next year to find out!