Wild Ireland:#1 landscapes and some plants

You may recall that we're not long back from nearly five weeks in Ireland, where our very enjoyable and educational road trip was an inevitable mix of cultural (including some truly excellent food, coffee and the odd beer or so), historical (relating both to the older 'golden' period of Irish society with its relatively enlightened laws and the darker days of Norman/English invasion and occupation) and of course the natural. I was certainly very interested in the cultural/culinary and older historical aspects, but this blog always focuses on the natural world so it is that on which I'll concentrate. Clearly 5 weeks (or 5 years) will never make me an expert, so I can only relate here what I read and learnt and saw. If I learn more from your reactions to this, so much the better.

One of my first impressions as a visitor with some ecological knowledge, and too much experience of looking at damaged Australian landscapes, is that much of what we drove and walked through was a savagely deforested land.  

Beara Peninsula, County Kerry. Looking across grasslands that have been grazed by sheep and 
cattle for at least 4000 and perhaps 6000 years, from when Neolithic farmers began to arrive from 
Britain and to clear the vast forests for farmland. In time they were aided in this by their 
use of porcellanite, a hard form of silica which was much more efficient at felling trees than 
the older flint axes. It was obtained from only a couple of sites in the north and widely traded,
 in Ireland and beyond.

In fact the only extensive landscapes we experienced that probably resembled their original state were some of the high rocky heathlands, though at least some of these were also originally forested. 

Heathland above farmland on the edge of Wild Nephrin NP, County Mayo, looking across to 
Achill Island. 15,000ha Wild Nephin (formerly Ballycroy NP until 2018) is one of Ireland's 
wildest parks and will become more so as an area added recently is 'rewilded' by removing
conifer plantations, planting native trees and protecting the blanket bogs (more on that below).

Heathland below An Earagail (or Errigal), Glenveagh NP, County Donegal.

 

Killarney NP, County Kerry. I am unable to say how much of this grand landscape is naturally
treeless, but I think I can safely say that trees never grew on the rocky ridges - unless there
was soil that has since washed away.

Some of the details of what follows are contested, which is how scientific understanding advances, but I'm following what seem to be the majority beliefs, as expressed in park information centres (which are well-resourced and -presented throughout the republic) and in other reading that I've done. This of course doesn't make it 'true', especially in every detail.

None of this is a criticism or a complaint - as an Australian I am in no position to criticise others for poor land management, especially when it began so long ago. Moreover much is being done to redress the issue via 'rewilding' projects. I'm simply commenting that sometimes it was painful to see, as is much of the Australian countryside in more settled areas.

The Ardgroom Stone Circle in County Kerry is some 3000 years old. These circles were 
built in situations with views to mountains, and often to loughs or bays.Given this apparent 
attention to the views it seems to me that the forest had likely been cleared by then.

When people arrived in Ireland some 9000 years ago, after the end of the last glaciation, it is estimated that about 80% of the land was covered in forest. (Much of this was temperate rainforest, though it has also been persuasively argued that at least some of it was more open woodland and even grassland.) These Mesolithic people were essentially forest people who lived by hunting and gathering, and they had neither the means nor the desire to clear the forests. The Neolithic people did, as explained above, and that need increased with each subsequent wave of invaders, until by 1600 75% of the forests had gone. When London burnt in the 1660s a lot of the remaining Irish oak forests were cut down to help rebuild it. Ship-building and barrel-making also contributed to the clearing. By 1900 perhaps 1% of the original forests remained. When (most of) Ireland returned to Irish rule as a republic in 1922 this began to turn around with replanting of trees and now 11% of Ireland is forested again. 

There is a strong movement on both public and private land towards this 'rewilding' by protection to allow natural regeneration and by active revegetation. That of course means different things to different people, and some restored forests (often referred to as woodland) are obvious near-monoculture plantations, especially of Scots Pines Pinus sylvestris (Ireland's only native pine), though others provide much more complex ecosystems.

Scots Pine plantations in Dooney Rock Forest, County Sligo above,
and The Raven Nature Reserve, County Wexford, below.

Such plantations are by no means devoid of life; here we saw a good array of birds,
including Great Spotted Woodpeckers which have recently colonised (or perhaps 
recolonised) Ireland, and the only Red Squirrels we saw. 

 

Beech forest Fagus sylvatica, Ards Forest Park, County Donegal; Beech is not native 
to Ireland but has been widely planted since the 1700s. Ards Forest is mostly planted
but is diverse with regard to trees and the understorey. It is managed by Coillte, a
'state-owned commercial forestry business' which manages more than half of Ireland's
forests. Its claim is a commitment to managing 20% of its estate to prioritise biodiversity
but the reality of this has been regularly challenged, as has its practice of clear-felling,
which is banned in parts of Europe. However Ards Forest, at least on our visit there,
looked relatively pretty good, though I'm not in a position to comment more usefully
on this issue.

Beech leaves, Ards Forest Park.

The famed Killarney National Park in County Kerry, with 1200 hectares of oak forest, represents the largest area of native forest left in Ireland, though not all of it is undisturbed.

Along the short walk to Torc Falls in Killarney National Park, through the oak forest; 
this is a very heavily visited area, but the tracks are in good condition to support the foot traffic. 

 

Torc Falls.

Old Sessile Oak Quercus petraea, Killarney NP, Ireland's national tree.
This particular tree is one of several growing in exposed conditions around a carpark
at a lookout on the western approach to the park through the mountains; it's not clear if these 
were always outliers on the upper edge of the forest, or are survivors of forest clearing.

The only forest with seemingly unequivocally original elements that we visited was Glengarriff Nature Reserve at the foot of the Caha Range in County Cork and even here ancient oaks were apparently felled to plant pines in the 1950s, before the remaining 300ha were preserved in 1991. The short walk we did there was awesome - and I save that word for when something really does inspire awe in me!

Wet Sessile Oak forest - rainforest in fact - Glengarriff NR.

The blanket bogs mentioned earlier are synonymous with western Ireland, which contains some of the largest areas of active (ie still peat-producing) blanket bogs in Europe. I mentioned Wild Nephin NP in County Mayo earlier; it protects one of the last intact active bogs in Europe. The origin of the blanket bogs is a vexed topic and there's no point me taking a stance here. Some claim that the blanket bogs are purely a human construct and that they only formed 4000 years ago when forest clearing began and land became waterlogged. Others assert that they began to form 10,000 years ago after the last glaciation; either way it certainly makes sense that the area of bog would have increased from 4000 years ago. Large quantities of logs and stumps are hidden in the bogs, and were extracted for use in earlier times, implying that at least some of the bogs are on formerly forested land. It is not contested however that they are important habitats and in need of protection. (I've spelt out blanket bogs each time because there are also raised bogs in the central mountains, which no-one seems to dispute are natural. They are deeper and smaller, not extending across the landscape like blanket bogs.)

Blanket Bog, Wild Nephin NP.

Bog Cotton or Cottongrass Eriophorum angustifolium is actually a sedge, 
and is one of the signature plants of the bogs. Here at Wild Nephin NP.

Before concluding this very abbreviated introduction to Irish habitats with an inevitable nod to the waters of the island, I want to briefly introduce one small but remarkable area of specialised habitat from County Clare on the west coast. This is The Burren, an area of deeply fissured sheet limestone that covers the surface of the land from the hinterland down to the sea; the plants that it supports, in addition to the typical Irish flora, contains elements of flora of the Mediterranean, the Arctic and the European Alps, including a stunning blue gentian which was unfortunately not flowering when we were there. 

The Burren NP in Clare; it a was a wet very Irish day when we were there, and we didn't stay as
long as we might otherwise have done.

The Burren kaarst landscape extends to the sea near Ballyvaughan.

At the end of the post I'll feature some flowering plants that we saw, and several of them were in The Burren, including the only orchid species we saw.

And of course Ireland is wet! Part of this wetness is in the form of valuable wetlands, including a couple of very important ones in County Wexford in the south-east. The Wexford Wildfowl Reserve has a couple of features that might make us raise our eyebrows in Australia, but it is an important winter sanctuary for many species of waterbirds that nest in the Arctic, especially the Greenland White-fronted Geese, of which the reserve harbours a third of the world population. Firstly much of it is farmland, and secondly 'the Slobs' were 'reclaimed from' the sea, or stolen from it, depending on your perspective, back in the 1840s by walling off a section of Wexford Harbour; much of the Slobs are about two metres below sea level.

One of the Wexford Wildfowl Reserve's Slob ponds.

However a much larger Wexford wetland, of some 500 hectares, is Tacumshin, a natural coastal lagoon declared a Special Protection Area (SPA) under the EU Birds Directive. It is regarded by the National Parks and Wildlife Service as 'as one of the most important ornithological sites' in Ireland, but as far as I can tell it has no formal protection under Irish law. We spent a pleasant and rewarding afternoon there.

  

Two views of the Tacumshin Lagoon, with some of the waterbirds (especially 
Mute Swans) visible below, albeit distantly.

Unsurprisingly the countryside, especially where it's hilly, is dotted with loughs (the Irish form of the Scottish loch - or vice versa of course). Good habitat and very good scenery!

The Isle of Innisfree - made famous by poet William Butler Yates, a Sligo local -
in Lough Gill, County Sligo.

Lough Nagarnaman, just below our very remote little cabin, 
high in the mountains of County Donegal.

    A small section of Lake (not Lough for some reason) Muckross
in Killarney NP, County Kerry.

And lastly with regard to Irish landscapes are the seascapes, which are pretty grand all along the Atlantic coasts in particular (ie south, west and north). I kept a careful lookout for cliffs, as seabird breeding sites, but after a spectacular start on Great Saltee Island off Wexford, we either couldn't get close enough to other cliffs or the weather made observations difficult. It didn't stop us enjoying the scenery though of course!

These and other cliffs on Great Saltee had breeding Gannets, Puffins, Guillemots,
Razorbills, Fulmars, Shags, Kittiwakes and other gulls among others.
I'll introduce some of them in the next post.

The famous Cliffs of Moher, in County Clare, seen through rain blown horizontally!

The west coast of Achill Island in County Mayo was another cliffscape that attracted us. 
None of these cliff examples were very high by Australian standards but were impressive nonetheless.

There were rocky headlands with associated beaches...

Near Cleggan, County Galway.

By Fanad Lighthouse, County Donegal.

Beara Peninsula, County Kerry. Glorious coastline, sadly treeless hinterland.

 ... and of course islands, but none of them more impressive than the Skelligs.

Skellig Michael and Little Skellig, 13k off the Iveragh Peninsula, County Kerry.
Skellig Michael is on the UNESCO World Heritage List for its 6th century monastery.
The island featured in one of the Star Wars series, but it is less well-known that approval
for the filming was granted by a government minister without proper consultation and 
allowed during breeding season, when Kittiwake chicks were blown from their nests
by a helicopter down-draught, to drown and be eaten by larger gulls. 
In the foreground is a deserted farmhouse (likely to have been abandoned during 
the famine years of the mid-19th century) and stone walls marking the boundaries
of small fields.

And I'm going to end this post with some flowering plants that we enjoyed in various of these landscapes. We were there in April, which is very early spring, so while there was certainly plenty of colour, there weren't nearly as many species flowering as there would have been later. One thing that took some getting used to was seeing plants we know as weeds, growing in their natural setting. Gorse, Dandelions and Hawthorn are all native plants here! Pretty much everything else was new to us, so we weren't discriminating and most of what follows will be somewhat ho-hum to any European readers. 

Gorse Ulex europaeus, Wild Nephin NP, County Mayo. Much of the country
was golden with Gorse during our travels. 

The rest are pretty randomly presented. 

Wild Leek (and many other names) Allium ursinum, Family Amaryllidaceae, 
Dooney Rock Forest, County Sligo. This edible plant is widespread in Europe and Asia, 
and has long been used as a vegetable or salad green.

Three-cornered Leek Allium triquetrum. Actually I've just discovered that this
one, a Mediterranean species, has been introduced to Ireland, perhaps because
it too is edible and is used like spring onions.

Wood Anemone A. nemorosa, The Burren NP, County Clare.
This is one of the first wildflowers to appear in spring.

Thrift Armerica maritima Family Plumbaginaceae, Fanad Lighthouse, Donegal Ireland.
This lovely flower is found in large clumps on coastal rocks and in salt marshes.

 

Daisy Bellis perennis Family Asteraceae, Belleek Woods, County Mayo.
And yes, it is referred to as just 'the daisy', as it is so ubiquitous!

Lady's Smock Cardamine pratensis Family Brassicaceae, Drombeg Stone Circle, County Cork.

Common Scurvy-grass Cochlearia officinalis, Family Brassicaceae, near Cleggan, 
County Galway. This member of the cabbage family has nothing to do with grass,
and grows, like Thrift above, on sea cliffs and rocks, and in salt marshes.

 

Holly Ilex aquifolium, Family Aquifoliaceae, The Burren, County Clare.
The famous Holly grows mostly as an understorey tree in deciduous forests, but
was here growing as a low shrub in the limestone heathland of the The Burren.

Bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta Family Asparagaceae, Belleek Woods, County Mayo.
Bluebells were just coming into flower while we were there and they were ubiquitous!
And always a delight...

Wood-sorrel Oxalis acetosella, Family Oxalidaceae, Glengarriff NR, County Cork.
Wood-sorrel is found across much of Europe and western Asia, wherever it's damp and shady.
It is sometimes known as shamrock for its trifoliate leaves, but the true Shamrock is a clover.

Cowslip Primula veris, Family Primulaceae, The Burren NP, County Clare.
I'd come across Cowslips in novels and poetry, but had no idea what they looked like.
Now I know.

Primrose Primula vulgaris, Glengarriff NR, County Cork.
The same comment applies here as for Cowslips above. They were coming
into flower in many places that we went, and are nicely scented.

Strawberry Tree Arbutus unedo, Family Ericaceae, near Kenmare, County Kerry. Though widely 
planted, this member of the heather family is found naturally only in and adjacent to
County Kerry, and around the Mediterranean! In Ireland it grows as an understorey tree
in wet forests, such as the remnant oak forests of Glengarriff NR.

 

Bilberry Vaccinium myrtillus, Family Ericaceae, Wild Nephin NP, County Mayo.
This edible-berried plant grows in boggy heaths across northern Europe, Asia
and North America. 

Dog Violet Viola riviniana, Family Violaceae, Drombeg Stone Circle, County Cork.
It is described as the commonest Irish violet and we found it to be so in many places.

And those who know me will not be surprised that I'm ending this brief round-up of common Irish wildflowers with an orchid, though it nearly didn't happen. We only found only one species that had started flowering, and that only in one site, the wonderful Burren - in the rain!

Early Purple Orchid Orchis mascula, The Burren NP, County Clare. This lovely orchid,
which I failed to do justice to here, is found throughout Europe almost up to the Arctic,
and across North Africa and to Iraq. But it was new to us!

If you've persevered to here, I'm grateful (and impressed). If so you might like to come back next time, when I finish this Irish journey with some animals, and especially birds. 

NEXT POSTING THURSDAY 17 JULY

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Borrowed Bird Names

I've been toying with the idea of this post - comparing the Australian birds whose names have been 'borrowed' from European birds with the 'originals' - for quite some time but without the illustrative material to do it. Our recent holiday in Ireland has finally given me the opportunity to take photos of some of these birds, so we can now see and compare the local species with those originals. For this post I have drawn heavily on the research for Australian Bird Names; origins and meanings, published by CSIRO and now in a revised second edition, which I co-wrote with my friend and colleague Jeannie Gray. 

I won't tell the stories of these origins in full here, as some are really quite convoluted, but the book's in libraries if you're interested. It's going to be primarily a photo essay with the abbreviated stories in the captions. Where possible I've used photos of both the species the name was based on, and the Australian species to which the name was probably originally applied, but sometimes that still hasn't been possible so I've used closely related and similar species to get the idea over. Often you'll find that quite a leap of the imagination is required to see what our forebears saw! Usually these names were applied by British colonists in the early days of the foreign settlement of Australia, mostly people with some familiarity with the British birds but with no knowledge or interest in actual relationships. Moreover they were often homesick and longing for some familiarity in  a very strange land. (They could of course have asked the people who'd had names for the birds for thousands of years but that wouldn't have occurred to most of them.)

We'll start with some obvious and straightforward ones, where a name was directly applied based on superficial similarities, and come back to some of them when more convoluted name combinations are involved.

Eurasian Magpie Pica pica, Dublin. This is a very common and conspicuous bird,
 a member of the crow family, found right across northern Europe and Asia.

Australian Magpie Gymnorhina tibicen, Wagga Wagga. Yes it's large and conspicuously
black and while, but that's about it really! Its family Artamidae includes currawongs,
butcherbirds and woodswallows, of which all but the woodswallows are
confined to Australia and New Guinea.

European Robin Erithacus rubecula, Donegal, Ireland. This is a very engaging and
boldly curious little Old World flycatcher which would have been familiar to many of the colonists.

 

Flame Robin Petroica phoenicea, Namadgi National Park, ACT. It seems to me that
the name robin for Australian birds, which arose early in the Sydney colony,
could have been initially applied either to this species (especially in winter when it
came down from the mountains) or the Scarlet Robin, but most likely both.
In either case the resemblance again is pretty sketchy, and while there are pink,
yellow and black-and-white Australian robins, there are no orange ones.

Southern House Wren Troglodytes musculus, Chilean Patagonia. This is in the same
genus as the Eurasian Wren T. troglodytes, but I found the latter to be very difficult
to photograph. However this image is essentially what our forebears were thinking
of when they named the Australian 'wrens'.

Female Superb Fairywren Malurus cyaneus, National Botanic Gardens, Canberra
(where I think all the wrens have been banded by ANU students and other researchers).
Yet again the resemblance is vague - small, brown, cock-tailed and diving into bushes is
about it. And of course it entirely ignores the very colourful males in breeding season.
Nonetheless 'wren' was used from the very early days of the colony, initially for this
species, but it was later expanded to scrubwren, emuwren, grasswren, heathwren etc, for
more or less closely related groups. (The group name 'fairywren' was only coined
in the 20th century.)

Red-billed Chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, Great Saltee Island, Ireland.
This is another crow, one of just two members of the genus, mostly associated
with mountains or coastal cliffs, where they typically forage on nearby short
grassland, as this one was.

White-winged Choughs Corcorax melanorhamphos, in Canberra.
They are black and have a curved bill, but neither bill or legs are red, though
their eyes are, all in contrast to the original chough. They are in a uniquely
Australian family of just two species of mud nest builders (with the Apostlebird).
In this case most of the settlers wouldn't have been familiar with the European chough
which lived in pretty remote places; it was the scientists who named it and were
badly led astray by the superficial resemblance, even into the early 20th century.

Pied (or White) Wagtail Motacilla alba, Cork, Ireland. A familiar species across
a huge range covering Europe, all of Asia and some of North Africa. The family
Motacillidae includes wagtails and pipits, of which only one pipit species
is found in Australia. Significantly, in this context, the name Willy-wagtail
was apparently applied to it (according to the authoritative Australian National
Dictionary) but only on the Isle of Man and in Northern Ireland.

 

Willie Wagtail Rhipidura leucophrys (and two species of honeyeater) Gluepot Reserve,
South Australia. This is an odd and somewhat mysterious story about one of Australia's
most familiar and fondly regarded birds. The oldest record we can find for the name
is in a south-east Queensland newspaper in 1882, though earlier oral usage seems likely.
The Australian National Dictionary (see previous caption) asserts that the name
was transferred to our bird but doesn't explain the late arrival of the name.
However on balance it would seem a huge coincidence if there was no connection.

Welcome Swallows Hirundo neoxena, Canberra. This species is very similar to and
closely related to the Barn Swallow H. rustica, which would have been very familiar
to British settlers and found throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere. In fact
I suspect that most of them would have just referred to both species as 'the swallow'
without distinguishing them.

Dusky Woodswallow Artamus cyanopterus family near Canberra. The name Wood Swallow
was applied to it early in the days of the Sydney colony (allegedly because of its
habit of perching on tree stumps) and often just elided to 'swallow', being lumped in
with 'other' swallows until the end of the 19th century. This was based purely on its habit
of soaring and catching insects in the air, as do 'real' swallows'; as mentioned earlier
the woodswallows are in the same family as magpies, currawongs and butcherbirds.

Mixed flock of woodswallows hunting insects over the Gulf Country savannah
of tropical Queensland.

But things started to get a lot sillier as the essential unfamiliarity of most Australian birds overwhelmed people trying to fit them into familiar boxes. They often felt obliged to coin combined forms that were usually, quite frankly, weird. Here are some of these combinations that we still use today.

For instance if we put 'magpie' into a name (see previous photo) it implies black and white, but what other bird did someone blend with it?

Ideally I'd have used a photo of a Eurasian Skylark Alauda arvensis, which is the lark the
new colonists would have been thinking of, but I haven't quite managed one, so this
similar and related Spike-heeled Lark from northern South Africa Chersomanes albofasciata
will have to stand in. It hardly matters as neither would seem to have anything in common
with one of our commonest birds which now shares their name.

Magpie-lark Grallina cyanoleuca, Canberra. I can't ague with the black-and-white implication
(indeed I grew up in Adelaide calling them Murray Magpies, for the river, because their
mud nests require them to live near water). But a lark? Hardly, but the colonists
were using this name from the early days of Sydney. This one has always eluded me.
Larks are classically renowned for their song (eg Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending)
but while I love the stroppy Magpie-larks, it's not for their singing prowess!

The shrikes, family Laniidae, are a largely northern hemisphere family of small to medium predatory songbirds and while they are not naturally found in Australia, their name recurs in compound bird names here. Here the reference is to their strong straight hooked bill. The best illustrations I have of this are from true shrikes but which don't carry 'shrike' in their name, but the colonists were thinking of closely related birds in the same genus and with this bill when they scattered the name among the Australian birdscape.

Taita Fiscal Lanius dorsalis, Serengeti NP, Tanzania.

Well if a bird had such a bill and sang beautifully like other birds they'd known, why not call it a shrike-thrush? (Rhetorical question by the way.)

Song Thrush Turdus philomelos, a familiar and famed singer found across Europe,
western Asia and North Africa.

So we have the group name of some of our great songsters, the shrikethrushes. Unlike most of those we've looked at here so far, this was not a spontaneous 'folk' name, but a translation of the genus name coined by the collaborating ornithologists Nicholas Vigors (Irish) and Thomas Horsfield (US) in 1827.

Grey Shrikethrush Colluricincla harmonica, Canberra. I hope you know the call
(if not click on any of these) but the predatory hooked beak is clear here.

OK, what if it has (sort of) such a beak but is black and yellow? Is there a British contender for the 'shrike' name here? Of course there is if you're determined to find it.

Great Tits Parus major are actually not bright yellow, as this Irish one shows,
but the black, white and yellow pattern is distinctive, leading to...

... Eastern Shriketit Falcunculus frontatus, near Forbes, central western NSW.
This name appears to have been first applied by the hugely influential John Gould
in his 1848 7 volume Birds of Australia. He also commented on the similarity
of its foraging behaviour to that of the quite unrelated European tits.

And one more 'shrike'-based compound name, the cuckoo-shrikes. My European Common Cuckoo Cuculus canorus photos are not usable, but the Australian Pallid Cuckoo Heteroscenes pallidus is a good 'body double' for it - indeed until fairly recently it was placed in the same genus. 

Pallid Cuckoo, Canberra.

Which together apparently make a cuckoo-shrike!

Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike Coracina novaehollandiae, north coast NSW.
Everything about this name is mysterious, though one may imagine the dipping flight to
resemble that of a Cuculus cuckoo, plus the hook-tipped shrike beak. However the name
appeared without any obvious prompting in the late 19th century (before that they were
mostly called caterpillar-eaters) and while the group is found throughout southern Africa,
south and south-eastern Asia and the west Pacific, there is circumstantial evidence
that the name arose in Australia. But that's all I've got, sorry!

Back to the thrush for a moment. It has unwittingly been complicit in another of the Great Mysteries of Australian bird names, along with another entirely unrelated bird group.

Brown Quail Synoicus ypsilophorus, north coast NSW. A common and widespread bird
in Australia and New Guinea, very similar to the Common Quail Coturnix coturnix of Europe,
Asia and Africa which many of the colonists would have known.

But put them together and you apparently get a quail-thrush - or at least the eminent and generally very sensible Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) committee tasked with preparing a final definitive list of Australian bird names in 1926 thought you did. Indeed they thought it was more appropriate than the hitherto prevailing 'ground-bird' name, though they didn't venture to explain themselves; I personally think that the port decanter was involved.

Female Spotted Quail-thrush Cinclosoma punctatum, Brindabella Ranges above Canberra.
OK, it lives mostly on the ground (like lots of other birds) and sort of sings - though sort of
not at all like any thrush that I know. Hmm.
The males tend to be more brightly coloured, not that that helps eitheer.

Male Copperback Quail-Thrush C. clarum, near Norseman, Western Australia.

And that's probably enough of these mind-twisting weird name inventions. But I'll finish with two  quite different bird name stories, both brought to the front of my mind in Ireland, which I think are worth mentioning. The first is a much more convincing use of a call than the thrush examples, to name an unrelated bird.

At one stage I stepped out of the car on the Atlantic coast and was immediately challenged by the unmistakable call [I'd suggest you listen to the 7th example, by Nick Talbot, if you're interested] of an Australian Bush Stone-curlew Burhinus grallarius.  

 

Bush Stone-curlew Darwin, Northern Territory.

Fortunately for my mental health I quickly remembered why our bird is so-called. In fact the group name arose in England, where another member of the genus lives (Eurasian Stone-curlew B. oedicnemus) in rocky drier habitats. And I'm getting to the point! Its wailing nocturnal call is remarkably similar to that of the Eurasian Curlew Numenius arquata, a large shore wader with a very long down-curved bill, which of course was what I heard in Ireland. In Australia the Bush Stone-curlew is often referred to as simply 'the curlew'.

Far Eastern Curlew Numenius madagascariensis in Cairns, tropical Queensland.
This species, which breeds in Siberia, is very similar to the Eurasian Curlew, and
with similar calls, but didn't influence the naming of the Australian stone-curlew. However it does
help us to envisage the 'model' for the original name.

And finally, and somewhat tangentially, another bird-derived name, though this time not applied to another bird.

This is a Rook Corvus frugilegus, a common Eurasian crow, here in Ireland.

And this is a Rook nesting colony...

... called, yep, a rookery.

But, for reasons uncertain the term came to be used for breeding colonies of seabirds in particular. So these birds, none at all crow-like, are among those which breed in rookeries!

Magellanic Penguins Spheniscus magellanicus, Strait of Magellan, Chilean Pagagonia.

Mixed seabirds, but mostly Guanay Cormorants Leucocarbo bougainvilliorum, Islas Ballasteras, Peru.

Northern Gannets Morus bassanus (part of a much larger colony), Great Saltee Island,
County Wexford, Ireland.

And that might be enough of such silliness, which says a lot more about us and our language than it does about the birds. I think it's interesting though, and it's an excuse to showcase some birds, which can never be a bad thing.

NEXT POSTING THURSDAY 26 JUNE

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