LAST St Valentine's Day found my loved one in a different part of the country. But it wasn't so bad really, because on the day in question a quietly rapt young man sat in my kitchen. And earlier in the week there had been a succession of other men - sometimes in ones or twos, once in a much larger group - who came to enjoy my lunchtime salons.
They had eyes for one thing only - but it wasn't me. No, their thoughts and eyes were unwaveringly fixed on a completely unknowing character out in the garden: Sylvia curruca, or the lesser whitethroat. This dapper little grey-and-white bird is a warbler, the same family as the blackcap - and it was for a blackcap that I first mistook it when it turned up in my garden at the beginning of January. But when I got a better view, I saw that, unlike the blackcap, it had no dainty dark beret on its head, and at just 13 centimetres long, it was a bit smaller. When finally I identified my guest - with a generous dose of help from BirdWatch Ireland - I was truly chuffed to learn that it is an extremely rare winter visitor. It was on its way - perhaps from Scandinavia, or continental Europe, or maybe just Britain - to warmer climes in India, Saudi Arabia or tropical north-east Africa. In other words, almost the last place in the world you'd expect it to pitch camp would be a Co Dublin back garden. And in fact, occurrences of the lesser white-throat in winter are so rare that "mine" was the third one ever recorded in Ireland, and the first ever in Dublin (or so my research tells me). This information, although extremely gratifying, has put a whole new - and somewhat nerve-racking - slant on what's going on in the garden. I mean, the responsibility of having such a record-making, rare bird on the premises cannot be shrugged off. It is never far from the front of my mind, and hourly (at least) checks must be made on its wellbeing. Particularly upsetting is the occasional harassment from an overly-territorial robin, the appearance of sinister cats slinking through the garden, and the hailstones that shoot from the sky without warning. Close monitoring is kept of its diet (cotoneaster berries, fried bread, fat balls and finely-grated cheddar), with adequate supplies present at all times - especially since I recently learned, to my dismay, that small birds lose a lot of body weight keeping warm on cold nights. And then there is the anxious hoping that the people who have come (always by polite appointment) to view the bird, actually see it and don't "dip" - as bird-watchers say when they have missed a sighting. The birders are mostly male (there have been only three women among a score of men). "It's a hunter-gatherer thing," explains one. "It's a collecting thing, we make lists of everything. We have year lists, life lists, garden lists, Irish lists, European lists, Western Palearctic lists. I even have a DART list!" he admits. The hunter-gatherers arrive punctually and courteously in stone-and-moss-coloured clothing, bringing binoculars, scary telescopes, guide books and notebooks. There is talk of "ticks" and lists, but all goes quiet when the little grey-and-white celebrity makes its flitting, hopping appearance, unaware of the massed optical hardware trained on its minute form. Although I've seen it a hundred times now, I'm still in awe that this few grammes of skittish bird-flesh-and-feather is able to fly thousands of miles a couple of times a year. Perhaps it was blown off course to Ireland. Or perhaps (the experts cautiously wonder) it suggests a new trend in lesser whitethroat migratory patterns - particularly since a couple of others have turned up on Ireland's east coast, in the wake of "mine". But whatever it is doing here, I am very grateful to it for opening the doors to the world of birdwatching. It is a world where, as Dick Coombes of BirdWatch says: "the unexpected can always be just around the corner". And sometimes - as was proved just the other day - you don't even need to go around the corner. The next "tick" on my brand-new garden list was a dramatic one. A sudden lull in sparrow chatter attracted my attention, and there on their favourite skimmia bush (good, dense, evergreen cover) sat a sparrow hawk - a darkly powerful bird, a predator, a killer of other birds. It was an embodiment of raw nature - the non-cuddly side of it - but one I am privileged to have seen just a few metres from my urban window.
BirdWatch Ireland, Ruttledge House, 8 Longford Place, Monkstown, Co Dublin. Tel: 01- 2804322; fax: 01-2844407. Individual membership: £20, family: £26, junior and concessionary: £10, key (includes annual journal): £40, group/school: