An ill wind blows American birds to our shores

ANOTHER LIFE:AS HURRICANE GUSTAV approached New Orleans, thousands of birds flew across the city from the ocean, fleeing ahead of the darkening sky. Picking this out of a TV reporter's commentary, the birds seemed more immediately real to me than the thousands of people streaming north out of harm's way. How a special interest can grab the mind.

In the same way, the many Irish birdwatchers keeping an eye on the progress of Gustav's successors - hurricanes Hanna, Ike and the rest (go to www.nhc.noaa.gov) - have not been wishing ill on anyone, but hoping for a lucky spin-off, as it were, from the winds' dying throes further north.

"Seeing a forecast that predicts a strong Atlantic storm," confesses Eric Dempsey, "starts us salivating like Pavlov's dogs at the prospect of an American warbler feeding in a garden on an Irish headland."

As a highly-regarded veteran of what used to be called, disrespectfully, twitching, he speaks for the more obsessional of birders who dash off in cars in the hope of a new tick in their life-list of species. He writes about it in his new book, Birdwatching in Ireland with Eric Dempsey (Gill Macmillan, €24.99). There's nothing too frantic about the book itself - it's definitely the one to buy when an interest in birds passes the garden-feeder stage, and is admirably relaxed and engaging. But after basics on what binoculars to buy and how to tell one bird from another, the chapters on migration and the autumn excitements of twitching and seawatching do much to explain the hobby's hold on the soul.

This is one of the autumns - mid-September to mid-October - when the right coastal wetland or island could yield five different American shorebirds in a single day of scanning. Among the Yankee waders, as birders call them, could be AGPs (American golden plovers), Buff-Bs (buff-breasted sandpipers) or pecs (pectoral sandpipers), and so on - Dempsey gives a whole chapter to the abbreviated argot of birding. And depending on the run of hurricanes up the eastern American seaboard, there could even be a fall of transatlantic warblers and thrushes.

Most of the birds come from the autumn flow of migrants down the western Atlantic coast from Canada and northeast US to South America. When they meet big depressions barrelling up the coast and spinning off towards Ireland, even strong, long-distance fliers such as the waders can be swept northeastwards along with them. Some waders store more fat than others and this can decide their survival: the greater yellowlegs, paradoxically, carries less fuel than the lesser yellowlegs (like our redshanks) and so is a far less durable vagrant.

Even though the tail-end of a hurricane can reach Ireland within 48 hours, the arrival of small American songbirds - "Yankee flits" in twitch-speak - is still an impressive phenomenon. Dempsey's book gathers in a wonderful gallery of bird portraits from expert photographers among the Irish birders. It offers, for example, the one hermit thrush that reached Cape Clear Island, Co Cork, in fierce winds and lashing rain 10 autumns ago, and a red-eyed vireo, perching fetchingly above fuchsia blossom at Loop Head, Co Clare.

Late last month, the appearance of three prime American rarities at once on Cape Clear - a yellow warbler, solitary sandpiper and northern waterthrush - revived speculation on the extent to which small birds hitch a lift on transatlantic vessels.

One e-mail to the Irish Bird Network even specified a huge American container ship which conveniently passes west Cork every Sunday afternoon. Dempsey grants that "some of the birds seen in Ireland may have been ship-assisted".

American redstarts, scarlet tanagers, indigo buntings, rose-breasted grosbeaks - the variety and number of small vagrants added to the Irish bird list is growing all the time, as Irish birders themselves multiply, along with their car ownership, mobile phones, and hour-to-hour information systems. Recording a rarity needs a good photograph or exceptional field-notes and preferably a fellow witness, all to satisfy the national Rare Birds Committee of Birdwatch Ireland.

Spreading the news is a fraternal, moral obligation and the Birds of Ireland News Service (BINS) at 1550-111700 supplies the latest intelligence and whereabouts at premium rates. Dempsey catches the mood of compulsive birders during peak migration times: "You'll ring the bird line many times to find out what you've missed. It's torture to hear that a tick is showing itself off to every Tom, Dick and Harry while you are stuck at a stupid wedding."

Birders who don't immediately share their rare sightings are "suppressors", slagged-off on Irish Bird Network and never spoken to again. "Stringers" are chancers constantly claiming to see rare birds. "Gripping off" is unacceptable behaviour by someone who really saw a mega and keeps rubbing it in to those who missed it. What a w***er, indeed.

Recently I saw a small red mammal with a white chest in Irishtown Nature Park. It came out of the long grass at the side of the path and quickly disappeared into the boulders on the shoreline. A search on the internet confirmed it as a stoat. Are there many of them in the Dublin area?

Paul Nugent, Sandymount, Dublin 4

There must be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them between parks and gardens.

In mid-August, I saw a silver-washed fritillary feeding on a buddleia in an area of clear-felled woodland. Whenever another butterfly approached its flower, it flew it off to a safe distance and returned to continue its feed on the same flower.

Pat O'Brien, Ballygawley, Co Sligo

A female pheasant came to eat the nuts fallen from a feeder, then a squirrel leapt from a tree and chased her across the lawn. This happened three times.

Amie Ellis, Shankill, Co Dublin

I have a wasps' nest under the floorboards of my house. They enter through an air vent. Should I get them exterminated or wait until they die off? How would I stop them nesting next year?

Leslie McQueston,

Rathfarnham, Dublin 16

They will die off soon. Cover the vent with fine net.

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