One hundred and twenty-five years ago this year, a seminal book was published with the simple title The Birds of Ireland. Its authors, Richard J Ussher and Robert Warren, had produced the first systematic account of all birds known in Ireland up to the end of the 19th century. The results of their extensive research show a stark contrast with the birdlife found in Ireland today.
The book was published in 1900, when Ireland was slowly recovering from the shock of the Great Famine some 50 years earlier. Poverty was widespread and most people still scraped a living from small patches of farmland. Ussher however, was from the landed class. His family home near Dungarvan, Co Waterford, was at the centre of a large estate that he had inherited from his father. Warren was a keen birdwatcher living in Co Mayo and they were both part of the Victorian craze for recording rare species and collecting specimens.
In fact, Ussher had been a passionate egg collector in his youth and his unique collection of more than 4,000 eggs, together with many whole nests, is held by the National Museum of Ireland today.
By the late 1800s he had turned to more scientific activities and was carrying on an extensive correspondence with bird enthusiasts, hunters and landowners all over the country, collecting information on every bird species that had been recorded to date. Most of this correspondence Ussher’s and field notebooks are in the collections of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin where they can be accessed online.
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Principally written by Ussher, the book was based on his extensive field research and that of his correspondents. It included, for the first time, tables covering the status and distribution of all bird species in every county of Ireland. It is remarkable how much change there has been in the status of some birds over the period since he undertook this monumental work.
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Farming became increasingly mechanised in the 1950s and 1960s. A switch from haymaking to silage allowed mowing to take place earlier and more frequently in the summer. More artificial fertiliser was applied to farmland to produce faster-growing grass and crops with a higher yield. This permitted much more intensive grazing pressure and higher densities of livestock. A side effect of the more intensive cultivation and the use of chemicals was a decline in the farmland insects and soil invertebrates, with consequent impacts on insectivorous birds.
All of this rapid habitat loss was reflected in dramatic changes in the populations of some bird species recorded by Ussher. The corncrake was described as “common and widespread” in 1900 but had become confined to a few offshore islands and coastal fringes of the northwest a century later. The corn bunting was common right around the coast in 1900 but became extinct as a breeding species in Ireland in the 20th century.
Twite, which was breeding in two-thirds of the country in 1900 and described as “locally common”, is now known in just 1 per cent of Ireland. Ring ouzel, now considered to be functionally extinct here, was present in two-thirds of the country in 1900 and seen in “every quarter of Ireland”. Yellowhammer, now on the red list of birds of conservation concern, was “very common everywhere” at that time.
By contrast, some bird species have markedly increased in Ireland since the time of Ussher and Warren. The fulmar, which was described as “a rare and accidental visitor” in 1900, first bred in Ireland in 1913 and rapidly spread around the coast, nesting on steep cliffs.
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One positive change for seabirds was the cessation of hunting and collecting of eggs from cliffs, which allowed some species, such as gannet, then breeding “in only two colonies in the southwest”, to recolonise numerous areas on the east and west coasts. The buzzard had already become extinct in 1900 when it was described as just a “casual visitor”. Since the 1970s it has recolonised and gradually spread across the whole country, helped by a reduction in poisoning and persecution.
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For the little egret there were “three records only” in 1900 but this species has become extremely common and widespread today, and often breeds in mixed colonies with the grey heron. Similarly, the great spotted woodpecker colonised Ireland naturally in the early 21st century, having been just a “rare casual visitor in winter” a century earlier.
If Ussher was birdwatching today, he would hardly believe his eyes.
Richard Nairn is an ecologist and author whose latest book is Future Wild: Nature Restoration in Ireland. Ella McSweeney returns later this month
