Spotted woodpecker is great, tho' splashed and small

ANOTHER LIFE:THE DAY THE clocks go back is when we hang up the bird-feeders again. Looking around, the garden certainly hasn't much else to offer: cotoneaster, firethorn, hawthorn, guelder rose all stripped when we weren't looking, and just a prickly rambler rose still starred with golden hips.

We’d like the birds back from wherever they scattered to: the robin’s descant of autumn is such a lonely song. Besides, I want to see whether they like the new bird-bath – a gifted improvisation, if I say so myself.

Take one solid old satellite dish, casualty of a windy gable, and one sadly withered oak sawn off as a tripod at just the right height. My bet is on a blackbird for the inaugural splash.

Of all the birds that keep us company in winter, the most glorious are the goldfinches, so widely attracted in recent years from wayside thistles to free suburban peanuts. In changed times, it could be that takeaway food for garden birds will seem too much of a luxury. The loss will be mainly in human delight, since nature can scarcely have intended the winter maintenance of quite so many blue tits.

Meanwhile, and remembering our joy at the first goldfinches at our feeders, I can imagine the thrill and surprise awaiting a few lucky people in Leinster this winter, when the new and glamorous bird at their nuts turns out to be a great spotted woodpecker (a rather misleading name, since the bird is no bigger than a song thrush, and at rest appears splashed, not spotted, with black, white and scarlet).

It is 10 years since the naturalist Gordon D’Arcy reminded us, in his book Ireland’s Lost Birds, that along with capercaillie and goshawk, this island’s vanished woodlands undoubtedly hosted the woodpecker Dendrocopus major, at least on the evidence of ancient bones found in caves in Co Clare. It may have disappeared finally with the last big clearances of trees in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Most of Europe has woodpeckers galore, with some winter migration from Scandinavia, but those in Britain have been highly sedentary, if locally expanding in numbers. The odd winter sighting of the great spotted in Ireland continued to raise hopes that, as our conifer forestry spread and matured, there might be recolonisation from Wales, where the woodpeckers have quadrupled over the past 40 years.

Indeed, the Irish Wildlife Trust began planning a reintroduction project, seeing in the bird a potential “keystone” species to enrich our natural environment. As Conor Kelleher stressed in the trust’s Newsletter, the nest holes drilled by woodpeckers and their excavation of deadwood would benefit not only bats, which are his special study, but squirrels, other birds and many insects, not to mention invasion by heartwood fungi to create more, ecologically useful, hollow trees.

But the trust’s preliminary research was overtaken by events.

From 2005, sightings in Ireland’s eastern woods, from Antrim to Wicklow, began suddenly to increase. Reports of juvenile birds, courtship flight displays and drumming by male birds, all pointed to breeding, and in 2006 the first nest hole, with young birds nearby, was found in Northern Ireland.

Then, late last summer, three juvenile birds turned up at bird tables in Dublin and Wicklow, and mobilising the hunt for actual proof of nesting became a passion for Dick Coombes, co-ordinator of BirdWatch Ireland’s annual survey of countryside birds. The great spotted woodpecker bores new nest-holes each spring, usually in narrow tree trunks, and after finds of old holes in Wicklow woods last winter, the first occupied nests – no fewer than eight of them, were found in May, high on the trunks of oaks and Scots pines.

The full, fascinating story is reported by Coilin MacLochlainn, with photographs taken by Dick Coombes under licence to the National Parks and Wildlife Service, in the current edition of Woodland, the new quarterly magazine of the reinvigorated Native Woodland Trust.

Led by Jim Lawlor from his home in Co Kildare, the trust is especially concerned with the conservation and renewal of ancient native woods. It plans the creation of a 100-acre cross-Border woodland; meanwhile, groups of teenagers from the US have been helping to plant a new native wood in Co Leitrim. Other volunteers have been collecting seed from native tree species in every ancient wood for cultivation close to their regional origins – a project called “Genotype Ark”. The trust has also been supplying free native trees to primary schools, some of which are offering plots of up to two hectares.

Between Crann, Pro Silva, Just Forests, the Irish Natural Forestry Foundation and Forest Friends, the voluntary activity for Ireland’s trees has grown apace, but the special aims of the Native Woodland Trust make it a promising focus of enthusiasm. Its website is nativewoodlandtrust.ie.

EYE ON NATURE

Our swallows went for a third, very late brood this year which coincided with the eventual warm spell. Five birds were still around as late as October 5th. Could they get stranded?

Nick Chambers, Rathdowney, Co Laois

They will set out to migrate, but their success will depend on the weather and the supply of insects, both here before they leave and on the continent.

Near Carrigaholt we met tourists on the beach who showed us a dowitcher but were unable to say whether it was a long-billed or a short-billed one. Are they common visitors?

Frank Folan, Palmerstown, Dublin 20

Long-billed dowitchers are rare but regular vagrants from North America to the west coast.

Our local grey crows are having a party on the fruits of yuccas which the Parks Department have planted along the causeway in Sandymount. They also eat periwinkles, cockles and other tellins.

Catherine Cavendish, Sandymount, Dublin 4

I saw what may have been a hen harrier being mobbed by lots of little birds near Liscannor. The hawk stood its ground, taking only slight evasive action as it hovered 20 or 30 feet above the ground.

Joe Staunton, Ennis, Co Clare

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