An Irishwoman’s Diary on the dawn chorus

We left the house early that summer morning and made our way along the Sandmall towards Athlunkard Boat Club. It was so early that the entire city of Limerick was fast asleep. The world seemed to be saying – ssshhh, tread softly. And when we spoke it was in whispers. Dad carried the long steering paddle and I had the two short oars.

Ivy

An early sparrow twittered sleepily from within thick ivy covering Quinlivan’s house.

No one answered his wake-up call.

There was a blue haze rising from the river as we negotiated the slippy slipway of the boat club.

The Abbey River – An Gabhail – was smooth as a mirror.

Dad coaxed the boat inwards from its mooring by wiggling the water with the tip of the paddle. A fish jumped, snatched a fly and plopped back down into the depths of the water.

Dad clamped the oarlocks in place, eased himself onto the bow of the boat and held it steady until I took up my position facing him in the centre.

Dip of the oars

On an incoming tide the boat was slid swiftly upstream towards the Shannon. There wasn’t a sound in the world except the dip of the oars and the sigh of the boat surging forward.

“Listen”, Dad said, “it’s starting – the dawn chorus. Ssshhh...that’s a chaffinch.”

And yes, I could hear him clearly above all the others. It was a sound like my mother made when she was annoyed with me. A sort of sharp clucking – tsk tsk tsk and then a little trill.

“It might be a bullfinch,” I said.

“No, no,” Dad said emphatically. “A bullfinch is more a tweet-tweet- tweet.”

From the trees along the Island Bank the birds entertained us as we eased the boat along, serenely as a swan, on the smooth river.

The cheeky robin’s song and the long melodious notes of a wren rang out above a cacophony of sparrows.

Dad named the birds – mistle thrush, willow warbler, yellow hammer and a nut hatch with its almost irritating pic pic pic. And from somewhere in a distant meadow came the sound of a corncrake.

Heron

On the swampy fields to our left a few whooper swans had settled themselves to rest before the onward journey to their breeding grounds. There was a heron standing still as a statue in the water under the railway bridge. I am positive that he winked at me.

Suddenly there was a splash beside us as a kingfisher knifed the water and rose, a wriggling fish in his beak, his iridescent blue and orange feathers glistening in the rising sun.

Tar

We brought the boat into the shallows between bulrushes to check if there were any cracks in the floor boards – fingers crossed that the stinking calf’s foot glue was doing its job and the tar coating had dried properly.

Dad lit his pipe and handed me a twisted stick of barley sugar and we rested there as a blackbird began to sing from the top of a tree on the Clare side of a river. “I’d like to be a blackbird,” I said.

And Dad burst into song – “If I were a blackbird I’d whistle and sing and I’d follow the ship that my true love sailed in . . .”

“I’d like to be one of those,” Dad said, pointing upwards to the skein of geese passing overhead with their wings making a rhythmic sawing sound.

“You’re joking, Dad. Why do you want to be a goose?

“There is nothing silly about a goose,” he told me.

“Geese were revered for thousands of years as watchdogs in myth and legend. They saved many cities and towns from surprise attack. Fishermen in Scandinavian countries depended on flocks of geese to predict the weather. There’s a little rhyme I once heard – ‘Geese on the sea, a good day it will be. Geese on the hill, the weather will spill.’ What’s more the Celts considered geese to be a symbol of valour and geese have been found in the graves of Celtic warriors. The Celts also believed that geese brought messages directly to and from heaven. So when I am gone to heaven myself, if you ever see a skein of geese flying overhead, give them a wave, I might be one of them. ”

Homewards

With that, several swallows began to swoop and loop low on the river – a signal that rain was on the way.

It was time to quench the pipe and finish my barley sugar and turn the boat homewards.