What does organic beef farming and homeopathy have in common: Claire Hurley, the force of nature who returned to her West Cork roots in 2009 to take over the 55-acre family farm, despite its uphill challenges. Claire farms an upland hilly farm in the townland of Gortnaclohy (field of the stones) near Skibbereen. “That should tell you everything,” she tells Mary O’Brien, laughing. Determined to bypass the Industrial Revolution altogether, by pairing the hardy, ancient genetics of Belted Galloway cattle with holistic animal health principles and organic standards, Claire has built a ‘birth-to-burger’ enterprise that prioritises animal welfare and soil health above all else.

Before becoming a farmer, Claire studied and worked in horticulture before going on to study and qualify as a homeopath.

She has fond memories of a childhood with her grandfather, when they “tilled small fields of fodder beet, potato’s and mangles with a single draft horse”. Mainstream methods of farming felt unsuited to her, as she had “neither the capital or motivation to intensively reclaim or fertilise such a rough landscape or to erect a large slatted shed that would never seen a return of my investment”.

Initially Claire bought four heifers from County Clare, “raising more than a few eyebrows as the breed was a rare and peculiar sight at the time.” In 2011 she acquired a bull, and in 2013 she slaughtered her first animal and sold weanlings. The frozen meat proved a difficult sell at the time. In 2015 she completed a diploma in Speciality Food production at UCC to better familiarise herself with food legislation, labelling, safety and training. Through this course she many gained friends but also confidence in what she was producing – a quality and ethical product.

In 2017 her friend Andy was selling his small food trailer and, as she puts it, “the rest as they say is history”.

Her hot food stall is now a regular sight at the Skibbereen Farmers’ Market every Saturday, and from Easter Sunday and every Sunday until the end of September at Schull Country Market. The main attraction is the Belted Galloway organic Beef Burger on a choice of bread roll – sourdough, ancient grain or brioche – with cheddar or Gubbeen cheese, and homegrown organic onions, tomatoes, gerkins and salad. They also serve a breakfast with the same choice of bread, an organic egg, Baltimore Pig (nitrite free) bacon and homegrown organic onions, salad and tomatoes.  Claire says it’s “a great sense of satisfaction when you serve the beef burger, salad, tomatoes, onions and lettuce that you have grown and cooked yourself!” A selection of frozen meat is always available at the stall.

Claire began her conversion to organic farming in 2010, “sure of the fact that I would continue to farm the land in the way it had always been done”. Having sold the remaining animals, she researched what sort of animal would best fit the habitat, and “landed on the Belted Galloway”, a breed that thrives on a grass-based diet and natural grazing. “They have a longer gastro-intestinal tract, which gives them the pot-bellied appearance, better to extract nutrients from rough grazing and convert into a nutrient dense meat. The breed has the rare ability to marble first and then put on backfat, they do not develop much fat under their hides; instead have a double coat of hair which provides excellent protection in cold, wet and windy weather, perfect for out wintering. They are naturally polled so no requirement for dehorning.” Excess grass in summertime is baled as haylage and supplementary fed so the herd can maintain a natural life as possible. “They are easy calving and excellent mothers so need minimal intervention.”

Claire believes that it has never been more important than now to move away from large-scale, long chain food production to more local agriculture. “Where food production systems rely upon a network of small, usually sustainably-run, family farms, which takes into consideration; the soil type and climate lending to the type of crop or animal to be grown there,” she explains. In her opinion, “Organic farming has not got the dependency on artificial fertilisers, vaccines, antibiotics, vaccines or petrochemicals.”

Homeopathy –  a system of medicine that uses highly diluted substances to trigger the body’s natural healing – plays a significant role in her farming practice. “A key principle would be the observation of signs and symptoms indicating the nature of the imbalance, be that plant or animal or human,” shares Claire, who has used homeopathy in a variety of cases such as calf scour, retained cleaning and a horse with an eye injury. In 2019 she did some training with Homeopathy at Wellie Level to teach the responsible use of homeopathy on the farm, though “Covid brought this to a halt”.

Farming has not been without its challenges. Beginning in September 2024, her herd succumbed to TB. “I ended up losing just under half my herd which included my in-calf cows and heifers, along with the genetics built up over the years.” In 2025, with much reduced stock, she wasn’t sure she would continue, but in November she purchased six organic Belted Galloways from Brennus on Cape Clear. “As the seasons have rolled around new calves have arrived from the remaining herd and life on the farm has returned to normal.”

Looking back, Claire reflects that “things have progressed so far, I never set out to be producing and cooking all my own produce at the Farmers’ markets but I suppose each step borrowed another and as you try to hone and perfect each stage you realise you’re halfway through something else!”

Her philosophy on animal welfare is clear: “An animal that is reared on a natural diet, with its mother, in its family grouping – free of pain and unnecessary intervention – gives it the best chance to be as healthy as possible and without vaccines and antibiotics; and when the time comes – to be transported and handled and slaughtered humanely. I think the consumer appreciates the fact that the animal, which is consumed, is well-looked-after from birth to death, lives a relatively free and good life. As humans, if we are choosing to eat meat, that is the least we can do for the animal who gives his or her life. That every step in that journey is carried out in the best interest of that animal.”

Each stage of the process has been a huge learning curve, from the animal rearing to handling and cooking the end product. The slaughtering process, meat hanging and cutting is carried out by MJ O’Neills in Clonakilty, “whose expertise is vital and without whose help none of it would be possible”.

Farmers’ markets provide more than just income. “Farmers markets are a huge social hub and have a huge sense of community so I do look forward to starting back after a long winter just feeding and talking to cows!” She still keeps horses and enjoys regular lessons, having purchased a young Irish Draught mare which she’s breaking in at the moment. “Of course the horses give the benefit of a mixed grazing system which is very important in organic farming as it interrupts the parasite life cycle. As if I need an excuse!”

Recently Claire has joined the pop up shop at Levis’ in Ballydehob to sell a selection of frozen organic meat. It is a one stop shop for tasty local ingredients in an iconic setting from 9:30am to 12:30pm each Wednesday.

Between that first flight and this one I must have flown between two and six times a year. I think that there are very few years when I did not fly at all, though it must have happened –  when I’d just had baby, when we travelled by ferry to Ireland, when I took a train instead of a flight on the European mainland. However, those years with no flights are few and far between. Let’s say that I have flown four times a year for the last (almost) 70 years. That’s 280 flights. Some short haul. Some medium. Many long haul. Dreadful really.

I pride myself in being someone who cares for the environment. I actively support efforts that protect nature. I shop local, avoid palm oil, plant trees and compost. Go me…except that I’m not really making a great sacrifice. It does not take much effort to read a label and buy the product that does not use palm oil. Recycling is probably the most demanding thing that I do, as it requires triage and packing up the car to bring it all into town. Not exactly a Herculean task. I am also someone who does not feel the need to buy more stuff, be it clothes, shoes or homewares and gadgets. That’s easy because I have a house stocked to the brim with stuff. Half the time I don’t even remember what I have. That does not stop me from grabbing a fast fashion item that catches my eye in the sales, or to occasionally buy a new gadget online without ever wondering where or how it was made. Going without a car is impossible. Even with my Free Travel Pass, most journeys are in my car.

I mention all this because, as I fly high above the clouds, I realise that though I do truly care enough about the environment to do positive things, I apparently don’t care enough to stop doing things that have a negative impact, like flying off to someone’s birthday party.

I lie to myself about how much I care and what a “good consumer” I am. In my defence, it is difficult and expensive to get off this island any other way than a cheap flight. A flight from Cork to Bilbao costs €54.30. A passage on the ferry the same day cost €159 and takes between 27 and 31 hours. Closer to home is the same problem. Though I have my FT pass, it took me seven hours to get back home from Galway on the bus, and trying to make a flight from my home using public transportation is a nightmare – even when it’s free.

I used one of those carbon footprint calculators to check my CO2 usage and I’m not the worst: 7.3 tons/year which is considered a climate conscious consumer (five-10 tons per year). Climate villains are over 10 tons of CO2). 3.4 tons of my footprint were generated by travel. I hang my head in shame, but don’t expect to forgo a sun holiday, or a visit to my sister at some point in 2026. ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa’. 

Lastly, I want to take a moment to mark the passing of a man who will truly be missed in Clonakilty and beyond. The town was in shock when the news started circulating that Tommy O’Donovan, of O’Donovan’s Hotel, had suddenly died. In our house we couldn’t believe it – didn’t want to believe it. Sure, wasn’t he the Grand Marshall at the Paddy’s Day parade with his sisters, Therese and Dena, just the day before. Sure, wasn’t I just chatting with him last weekend. Sure, wasn’t he up a ladder just a few days ago. Sure, wasn’t he over at the Women’s Shed just that morning? Denial put up a fight but in the end was the sad truth: Tommy was gone. Never brash or loud, he was nonetheless the essence of our town, very much a mover and shaker. An integral part of the motor that has made Clonakilty and West Cork one of the most successful and progressive areas of Ireland. A quiet environmentalist, a community leader who was more often in the background and yet got things done: the allotments, the men’s shed, the bike scheme…too many small and large contributions to mention here. The outpouring at his funeral service reflected how loved he was. The term ‘pillar of the community’ is often flashed about when someone passes. Tommy was and will always be a true pillar of our community, and with his passing we all feel a bit wobbly.

I often talk to cows; where I live, there isn’t much else to talk to. They can look so miserable, standing in muddy fields, soaked by the pouring rain and battered by the wind. But then, on a sunny day, chewing the cud, they seem quite content. They stare back at me with those great big eyes and inscrutable expressions while I assure them that I’m not a carnivore. But I do drink milk, and life without cheese would be unthinkable, so in a small way, I contribute to their misery. 

What cows don’t ever appear to be is intelligent, so the title of this article must seem an oxymoron (which itself could be a bovine pun). But recently, it has been discovered that one cow has learned to use tools. Veronika, a Brown Swiss living in Austria, uses a broom to scratch her back. She picks up the handle with her mouth and manoeuvres it with her tongue towards wherever needs scratching. She even knows which parts of the brush to use for which jobs – the bristles for a general back scratch, the handle for getting at itches in difficult places underneath.

Many animals can use tools. In 1960, the great Jane Goodall, who died last year, first observed a chimpanzee using a grass stem to collect termites. Chimps can also scoop honey out of wild beehives with thick sticks, and use leaves as spoons. Orangutans construct nests from leaves and branches, use a variety of twigs for food gathering tasks, and know that poking a catfish with a stick will make  the fish jump out of the water where it can be easily grabbed. Elephants break off branches to swat flies and scratch itches, and some dolphins protect their noses with sponges when they are foraging for fish hidden in the sea bed. Egyptian vultures use stones to break ostrich eggs, and New Caledonian crows modify sticks and leaves, just like apes, to get food. Even some invertebrates use tools: the Indo-Pacific veined octopus makes shelters out of discarded coconut shells, bottles or other litter, while the Hawaiian boxer crab faces any threat with a sea anemone in each claw, like a Wild West outlaw with two guns. So perhaps a  brush-wielding cow is not so strange.

Cows are ungulates, i.e. mammals with hooves. There are two types of ungulate: the odd-toed ones in the order Perissodactyla (horses, rhinos and tapirs); and those with an even number of toes in the order Artiodactyla – the camels, pigs, hippos and ruminants. (Some zoologists, controversially,  place whales in the latter order too, but that is another story). There are six families of ruminants, including the deer, the giraffes and the bovids. The bovid family is further divided into three sub-families: antelopes,  goats and sheep, and buffaloes and cattle. 

Ruminants all have four-chambered stomachs. A cow eats grass and swallows it quickly. The grass passes into the first and largest chamber, the rumen, where bacteria and protists start to break it down and produce various nutrients. When the rumen is full, the partly digested grass is regurgitated and chewed; the cow is literally ruminating, perhaps having profound bovine thoughts. When the cud is broken down sufficiently, it is swallowed again, and this time passes into the second chamber, the reticulum, where any alien objects (like plastic) gather. Next, food goes to the omasum, which absorbs water and fatty acids, and finally into the abomasum, where further digestion takes place. 

There are two reasons for all this: firstly, grass is very difficult to digest; and secondly, ruminants are, in the wild, constantly under threat from predators such as lions and tigers, so it is vital to get as much food inside as quickly as possible, then digest it at leisure in a safe place.       

The domestic cow’s closest relatives are the six species of buffalo (five Asian and one African); two species of bison (American and European); and three species of wild cattle – gaur, bentang and yak (which have each been domesticated too). The gaur comes from India and SE Asia; the bentang, which is critically endangered, survives only in a few places in SE Asia and northern Australia; and yaks are the extraordinarily hairy cattle from Tibet and other remote parts of western China. (I tried yak once, about twenty years ago in Yunnan Province, fried with Szechuan peppercorns and pak choi; it was the just about last mammal meat I ever ate). 

There are two more notable bovines: the kouprey and the aurochs. The kouprey, Bos sauveli, is the national animal of Cambodia, not that many people inside or outside Cambodia know this. The concept of a national animal is meaningless anyway (we don’t have one here), especially in Cambodia, because the kouprey is extinct – the Cambodians ate them all. Koupreys once lived in areas of mixed grassland and forest from Thailand to Vietnam. Habitat loss, as well as hunting, contributed to their demise – much of Cambodia’s forests were lost during the Vietnamese War and the insane rule of the Khmer Rouge;  commercial, often illegal, logging since has done even more harm. The last sighting of a live kouprey was in 1983. There are none in captivity; only one was ever kept in a foreign zoo, in Paris; it died during World War Two. The nearest I came to a kouprey was the statue of two bulls in the town of Sen Monoron, in the north-east of Cambodia.

 The aurochs, Bos primigenius, was the ancestor of modern domestic cattle. It was a massive animal, the bulls nearly six feet at the shoulder, and each horn nearly three feet long. It once lived all over Europe, Asia and North Africa, grazing alongside Irish elk, straight-tusked elephants and narrow-nosed rhinoceros. Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens hunted the aurochs, and painted pictures of it, along with other animals, on the walls of their caves. The giant bulls of Greek mythology, symbols of power and sexual potency, were aurochs. But by the end of the 17th century, they had all been exterminated. (The word ‘aurochs’, by the way, is from Old German, and is related to ‘ox’; it can be singular or plural; an alternative plural is ‘aurochsen’.)

Domestication of the aurochs occurred twice: in the Middle East, about 10,000 years ago, this produced our beef and dairy cattle, Bos taurus; and in India, about the same time, gave rise to Bos indicus, the humped cattle or zebu. These were introduced into Africa about 3,000 years ago and hybridised with African aurochs, which resulted in breeds such as the enormously-horned Ankole. 

While cattle here are just agricultural commodities, to the Hindus they are sacred and often lead pampered lives; an estimated five million cows roam freely in Indian cities. Unfortunately, there is little for a cow to eat in a big city, except human rubbish; according to a 2017 article in the Times of India, nearly 1,000 cows die a painful death each year in the city of Lucknow alone, due to feeding on plastic. In a 2021 report in the same newspaper, one cow was found to have 77 kilograms of plastic in its stomach. So much for being sacred.

Cattle kill, on average, twenty-five people every year in the UK and USA, and probably many more worldwide – some are in farmyard accidents, others involve stupid people walking across fields where cows are grazing. In Spain, where bull-fighting (a relic of Roman barbarity) is still considered a sport,  matadors and those idiots running through the streets of Pamplona during the Fiesta de San Fermin, sometimes get gored by the horns of the animals they are tormenting; that seems fair enough to me.

Cattle cause more harm by the production of methane, mostly by eructation resulting from their digestion. Methane makes up 19 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, 21 per cent of it coming from cattle. Certain food additives can limit this, such as rapeseed or seaweed – particularly the red alga Asparagopsis, an invasive species from warm waters. Research in California found feeding a seaweed supplement to grazing beef cattle  cut methane production by nearly 40 per cent. 

I don’t want to upset farmers – theirs is one of the few jobs that is truly essential; they should be appreciated, and paid, much more. But there are an awful lot of domestic cattle on the planet; the current world population is about 1,500,000,000 – one third of all mammalian biomass. That could be reduced. Apart from the methane they produce, such a huge number needs an equally huge amount of grazing land, much of which was once natural habitat for wildlife – whether rainforests in South America, or gorse-covered hillsides in West Cork. Perhaps now, with the knowledge that cows are not stupid, but are capable of deliberate thought and decision making, people might stop eating them.

In the early 19th century copper mining was prevalent across West Cork with miners brought in from Cornwall in the early part of the century to supplement the workforce. While back then landowners owned the mineral rights below the surface of their land and no government licence was needed to mine copper, today a government licence issued by The Geoscience Regulation Office (GSRO) is needed to even prospect for minerals. At the end of 2025, a total of 18 Prospecting Licences (PLs) were issued in West Cork – to ‘Aurum Discovery Ltd’. These licenses each relate to a portion of land outlined and mapped in the GSRO document. While copper is one of the most useful metals in the push for clean energy, mining it can cause tremendous destruction of the environment, therefore Innovative solutions are needed and are being developed writes Fiona Hayes.

Copper increased in industrial importance in the 19th century with the invention of the electric battery in 1800 and electromagnets two-and-a-half decades later. Commercial telegraph introduced in 1837 further increased reliance on copper as a conductor and traditional telephone landlines continue to be made of copper wires today. Indeed, a single iPhone contains around 6gms of copper.

In West Cork, copper mining started in Allihies in 1813, Ballycumisk and Horse Island in 1814, then opened in Balllydehob, Cappagh, Gortavallig, Kilrohane, Bantry, Scart, Derryinagh, Dereenlomane, Mount Gabriel, Dunbeacon, Gortycloona and Skeagh. 

With ‘Aurum Discovery Ltd’  was granted a licence in 2025 to prospect in West Cork, it’s important to note that this doesn’t imply a licence to mine for minerals. Such a licence would require a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to support applications to the Local Authority for Planning Permission and to the Environmental Protection Agency for an Integrated Pollution Control or Industrial Emissions Licence. A period of time would then be allowed for statutory consultation with a wide range of Government bodies and public scrutiny of the EIS along with public comment.

There have been prospecting licences continuously covering these geographical areas for at least the past decade. Prior to Aurum being granted licence on these particular land blocks, they were held by ‘Adventous Exploration Limited’ (AEL), who engaged Aurum to manage exploration projects and provide technical expertise. In fact (AEL) held 100 per cent of the 114,000 hectares West Cork licence block. 

AEL have a Joint Venture Agreement with the Canadian-based mining company ‘First Quantum Minerals’ and have identified areas for secondary follow up prior to potential drill testing of targets and exploration of base metals. First Quantum Minerals specialise in copper mining. 

The areas of West Cork being considered occur along up-plunge folds of land between the Sheep’s Head and Glandore. The initial investigations have identified sediment-hosted copper and silver (Cu-Ag) deposits comparable to several other world-class sites. To determine whether these sites would yield a profitable level of mineral extraction, it is likely that further work, including some drilling, will need to be done. This will require landowner permission and Environmental Screening Assessment. 

The GSRO considered 48 submissions opposing the grant of these licences, however practically all the submissions focused on mining rather than prospecting; thus were discounted as reasons for withholding the licences. 

Mining, rather than prospecting however, requires three separate consents obtained from three different agencies: Planning permission from the relevant Local Authority; An Integrated Pollution Control (IPC) or an Industrial Emissions (IE) Licence from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These licences contain strict conditions on how a mine must operate to protect the environment from pollution; A mining lease or licence issued by the Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment .

If a mining licence were to be considered, a public consultation period would be published in a local newspaper and at experience.arcgis.com.

All of this however, raises serious questions for people interested in environmental protection and climate change. 

The prospecting company is interested in copper because it is one of the most useful metals in the push for clean energy. Renewable energy systems use four to six times the amount of copper as do fossil fuel or nuclear plants. A photovoltaic solar power plant contains approximately 5.5 tons of copper per megawatt of power generation. A single 660-kW turbine is estimated to contain some 800 pounds (350 kg) of copper. Industry is predicting a 70 per cent increase in copper mining to meet the 2050 climate decarbonisation goals.

Mining copper however can pollute the atmosphere with dust and contaminate the water table with chemicals used to extract the mineral. Some modern mines fear having to pump contaminated wastewater around the mine forever to prevent it entering the water table.

Innovative solutions are needed. As materials scientist Prof Mary Ryan of Imperial University, London said, “The world needs to electrify its energy systems, and success will absolutely depend on copper. The metal is going to be the biggest bottleneck in this process.”

Prof Mary Ryan heads up the Rio Tinto Centre for Future Materials opened in 2024 and based at Imperial College London, in partnership with several international university groups. 

The centre’s first project is looking for responsible ways to source copper. Of course, ensuring improved recycling of copper from batteries, cables and so on will be important, but the centre is looking at questions such as, can the mineral be extracted without disturbing the rocks at all? For example, could viruses and bacteria be used to harvest copper?

The team have also been searching for underground sites where copper-rich brines, created by volcanic systems are still in liquid form. The volcanic systems could provide geothermal energy to pump the brine to the surface via boreholes. Sites in New Zealand and Japan have been identified as possibilities for this technology.

Franklin Keck and Ion Ioannou co-founded the company RemePhy Technologies, a spinout from Imperial University PhD research. RemePhy are pioneering the use of GM technology to develop plant-bacterial systems that have an enhanced ability to extract metal from the soil. They state, “We’re building plant–microbe systems that clean contaminated soil and recover critical metals as the plants grow. Thereby reducing disruption, versus dig-and-dump approaches; and unlocking stranded brownfield and mining-legacy sites.”

The Irish Government, in response to the latest energy crisis precipitated by war between USA/Israel and Iran, has stated it will pursue energy sovereignty focusing more on renewables. This will require copper.

Possibly, technical solutions such as the ones RemePhy are developing, hold the key to finding the quantities of copper we need for this transition. Perhaps new prospecting licences will not lead to new mines but, by using innovative technologies, will nevertheless enable our 80 per cent renewable electricity target by 2030. Let’s hope so.

By Dave Rees and Nicholas Mitchell

The West Cork Branch held the inaugural first bird race on January 29, 2017. Apparently there had been a bird race in earlier years but no records exist. Our Chair at the time, Paul Connaughton, felt that this would be a great opportunity to showcase birding in West Cork and attract both experienced and novice birders. Six teams registered for that first race. The number of teams entering the race remained the broadly same for the first few years and then there was a gap for Covid in 2021 and 2022. On its resumption, registrations started to increase, and families and students started to come along. 

The race is now held on the first Sunday in February and this year a record 16 teams registered. The teams gathered at Scally’s car park, ready for the 8.30am start. There was the usual excited chat going on, with friends catching up, renewing friendly rivalries and trying not to give away too much about their plans: where they would head first or their treasured spots for guaranteed birds. The weather was set fair, with no rain forecast, but the sun’s glare was going to be an issue, particularly when looking out to sea. The high tide times were not the friendliest either, with high tide in Clonakilty not due until late afternoon.

At 8.30am sharp the teams scattered to their chosen first spots. The race is confined to an area between the boatyard at Ring in the east and the pier at Rosscarbery in the west, with the N71 road the northern boundary. For some teams, meticulous planning goes into deciding how best to spend their time and which sites have to be visited at certain times. For others it’s a day out birding with friends. Although the teams disperse, there are times when they bump into each other. Our own team, for example, met two others at Sands Cove. We had headed there to look for Rock Pipit, which had been surprisingly difficult to find during the day. Not only did we find Rock Pipit, but had the unexpected bonus of a Black Redstart.  At these unexpected meetings, there is the usual banter and pretence of doing really well, before finally admitting that the day is a little quiet.

As always there’s the last minute rush to call in at a few more sites and try to add one or two extra species to the list before getting back to O’Donovan’s Hotel by 6pm, which is where the fun starts. Whilst the organisers tot up the scores, the stories begin as to who saw what and where. Then the scores are in and announced. This year the winning team was The East Corkers (Paul Moore, Denis O’Sullivan, John Coveney and Mark Shorten) with an impressive total of 100 species, narrowly beating the local C Team (Ciarán Cronin, Colin Bartin, Calvin Jone and Christopher O’Sullivan) by one bird! And in third place with an amazing 95 was the family team Bob’s Mighty Munch Bunch (Sam Bayley, Lucy Bayley (5), Wayne Greene-Salm, Lulu Greene-Salm (11) and Heidi Greene-Salm (9)). Once again we are grateful to Dena, and Tommy (RIP), and their team for hosting us once more at O’Donovan’s.

Since the race started nine years ago, 132 species have been recorded. This year some of the highlights included Black Redstart, Glossy Ibis and Great Spotted Woodpecker.  But the real winner and highlight was the day itself. A great day was had birdwatching in West Cork in good weather and meeting up with other birders later in the day. For those of us involved in organising the race, it was fantastic to see so many teams turn out and in particular to the number of youngsters joining in and obviously enjoying the day. If this sounds like fun, why not put a team together for next year’s race on Sunday, February 4? See you at the start!

In the meantime, why not join us at one of our forthcoming outings. Unless expressly stated, all our events are free and are open to everyone; you do not need to be a member of BirdWatch Ireland

BirdWatch Ireland
West Cork Branch News

Upcoming outings:

Sunday, April 19: Bilingual Nature Walk idir Gaeilge agus Béarla, Baile Bhuirne 

During April: Ad hoc migration outings notified on our WhatsApp Group. The joining link can be found on the home page of our website 

Visit www.birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie for details of upcoming events.

For more information, contact Fiona O’Neill at secretary@birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie

Follow us on: Facebook: @BirdWatchIrelandWestCork. Instagram: @birdwatch_ireland_west_cork

Have you ever jumped back after touching a nettle, shaking your hands after feeling that zingy sting on your skin? Here’s something you might not know: those prickly plants are also one of nature’s tastiest and most powerful wild foods. Rich in iron, calcium and vitamin C, nettles help  keep your bones strong, your blood healthy and your immune system ready for action. This plant actually contains more calcium per 100g than milk, and twice the iron of spinach. As long as nettles are correctly identified and cooked, they are safe to eat and they won’t sting your mouth when you eat them. Once they are steamed, boiled or sautéed, they become soft, safe and delicious.  

When to pick  

Nettles should be picked from March to the end of May from a spot that hasn’t been sprayed with pesticides and not too close to a road. Young nettles are tender, mild and full of vitamins but when nettles start to flower, the leaves will become tougher and can taste bitter and unpleasant!  

Myths  

There are plenty of myths about nettles: Did you know that dock leaves don’t actually work! 

You may have heard someone say “Rub a dock leaf on it!” after a nettle sting. Science tells us dock  leaves do not actually neutralise the sting. The relief often comes from the cooling rubbing motion rather than the leaf itself. In fact, it is heat that removes the sting completely.  

Another myth we hear is that nettles are weeds, with no real use. In fact, for centuries people across Ireland, and beyond, have eaten nettles in soups, breads and teas. They were even used to  make strong fibres for cloth long ago, imagine! Far from being useless, nettles are a nutritional powerhouse and one of the most generous plants you can find.  

Fun Fact  

Here is a magical plant fact. The stalky plants children pick to use as pretend swords – the ones  with a long brown seed head and a pale white collar around the stem – is called plantain. Crushing a plantain leaf, mixing it with spit and gently rubbing it on a nettle sting can reduce itching, swelling and irritation instantly.  Plantain contain compounds which possess antihistamine and anti-inflammatory properties.

With the right preparation, nettles can become a fun way for families to explore wild foods together,  learn about plants and cook something delicious, growing wild in our gardens.  

Recipe 1:Potato and Nettle soup 

This soup is so comforting and bursting with goodness.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp olive oil

• 2 tbsp butter

• 1 medium onion chopped

• 1 small leek washed and finely chopped

• 1 large potato, peeled and diced

• 1 clove of garlic crushed or grated

•  salt and freshly ground pepper

• 1 litre chicken or vegetable stock

• 200g or 2 cups packed tightly with washed young nettle leaves 

Method

Heat a large heavy based saucepan, add the olive oil and butter. When the butter sizzles, add the onion, leek, potato and garlic and toss well. Season with salt and pepper and place a circle of parchment paper on top followed by the lid. Sweat on a gentle heat for 10 to 15 mins stirring occasionally until the potato is soft.

Remove parchment, add the stock and simmer for a few mins making sure the vegetables are soft. Add the nettles and simmer for another few minutes.

Purée and add salt and pepper if needed. Ladle into bowls and serve with a spoon of nettle pesto drizzled on top or a spoon of crème fraîche and a drizzle of olive oil.

Wild garlic flowers are also lovely sprinkled on top if available

Recipe 2: Nettle Pesto 

Pesto is so versatile, it adds so much flavour, as well as Vitamin A, C & iron. Use on top of soup, frittata, toss with pasta, in sandwiches.

Pick nettles from March to June from an area that has not been sprayed and away from the roadside. Wearing long gloves, cut the top two to three pairs of leaves. Wash well then place into boiling water for 30 seconds, then into ice cold water.

Ingredients

• 4 cups young nettle leaves washed

• half cup toasted cashew nuts or pine nuts

• 2 tsp lemon juice

• 1 large clove garlic, crushed or grated

• Salt & freshly ground pepper

• half cup extra virgin olive oil

• half cup finely grated Parmesan (ideally parmigiana reggiano)

Method

Place nettles in a food processor with nuts, lemon juice, garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil. Blitz until smooth, then stir in parmesan. Place in sterilised jars and top with olive oil, store in the fridge.

Wild garlic leaves can also be used here instead of nettles and they do not need to be blanched.

There was much discussion in the pub last week about the weather, as usual, particularly the flooding in Co. Wexford. Some suggested that pearl mussels and slugs were to blame, a view also expressed in the newspapers by an Enniscorthy  town councillor, though he talked about “pearls and snails”. So I thought it time for a small lesson in malacology – the study of molluscs.

The phylum Mollusca is one of the great divisions of the Animal Kingdom. It is made up of seven classes. Four of these will be unfamiliar to most: Monoplacophora, Polyplacophora (chitons), Aplacophora and Scaphopoda. The other three classes are well-known: Cephalopoda, Gastropoda and Bivalvia. I have written before about cephalopods and gastropods; the former are cuttlefish, squids and octopuses, the most advanced of the molluscs, and indeed, of all invertebrates. Gastropods are the snails and slugs. Bivalves are those molluscs with two shells, such as mussels and clams. A mussel is no more closely related to a slug than a fish is to an elephant.

Bivalves are probably the least charismatic of the molluscs. You can look an octopus in the eye, and recognise a fellow being. You can do much the same with a snail, though they are not so bright. But most bivalves don’t have eyes, or even heads. Cooking bivalves might not engender the same degree of guilt as, say, watching a lobster struggling in a pan of boiling water, and when served up in a shellfish risotto or as moules marinière, it is easy to forget that they were once living animals. But they were.

There are over 9,000 species of bivalves; most are marine, but a few families have species that live in freshwater. I always found their classification rather difficult and sometimes illogical, based as it was upon internal structures such as gills, muscles and hinges, and before writing this, I had to get out my old invertebrate zoology book and see what I had forgotten. Then, knowing that zoologists (and botanists) keep re-naming and re-classifying things, I looked them up on the internet. Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn’t seem to have mastered bivalve taxonomy either so, for simplicity, I will divide the bivalves into four categories.

Firstly, there are those with muscular feet, two siphons and two identical shells. These are the cockles and clams. We are all familiar with cockles; they live in shallow sand, are easily collected and good to eat. Clams are more variable, and the word can refer to many quite different types of bivalve. There are thousands of species, from tiny ones less than a centimetre wide, living unnoticed in littoral mud, to the giant clams of the Pacific, the largest of all bivalves, which can reach 120 centimetres in width and weigh 200 kilograms. Clams have always been commercially important: the hard-shelled clam, Mercenaria mercenaria, known as the quahog in America, is the main ingredient in clam chowder, and was one of the species used by indigenous Americans to make wampum – ceremonial beads which later became a currency for trade with the Europeans, hence its Latin name.

My second category is made up of bivalves with reduced feet and siphons and sometimes non-identical shells; they usually live on top of the sediments or anchored to rocks. Many are also commercially important. The common mussel grows on every rocky shore around our coasts; thousands of tons of farmed mussels are exported from Ireland every year. The great scallop has many rudimentary eyes and swims by jet propulsion; it is mostly captured by dredging, which is very destructive. The European flat oyster used to be poor man’s food; now it is an expensive treat. Most bivalves can produce pearls of some sort; the best come from Indo-Pacific pearl oysters.

The third group are the burrowing and boring clams. These have very long siphons and much stronger feet that allow them to borrow deeply into sand, wood or rock. Razor shells are so named because they look rather like old fashioned cut-throat razors; try to catch one and its long, muscular foot will pull it downwards at great speed. Then there are the soft-shelled clams or sand gapers; they are large and meaty, and though common on our beaches, are rarely eaten here, but in America are a main ingredient of the New England clam-bake. Their cousin, the geoduck from the Pacific coast of North America, can live for more than 150 years, and has siphons so long, up to a metre, they cannot be retracted into the shell. 

The related piddocks use their shells as rasps to make holes in rocks in which they live. They still look like bivalves, but the shipworms, Teredo, don’t. These have become so modified for boring, they resemble worms, and their greatly reduced shells are used not for protection, but as tools for chiselling away at timber. Unappealing as they look, shipworms are a delicacy in some south-east Asian countries.

Before the invention of antifouling paints and steel ships, Teredo was a menace that destroyed many large vessels. One famous example was HMS ‘Roebuck’, commanded by the explorer, naturalist and pirate William Dampier. Having written a best-selling book about his first circumnavigation of the world, Dampier was commissioned by William lll in 1699 to explore the east coast of New Holland (now Australia). He surveyed western Australia and parts of New Guinea and collected many specimens new to science, but by then the ‘Roebuck’ was so riddled with shipworm the expedition had to be abandoned and the ship sailed homeward. They got as far as Ascension Island, where she sank. So from the mid-18th century, Royal Navy ships had their bottoms sheathed with copper, which kept the shipworms out.

Back in the 1990s, I had my own experience with Teredo. My old wooden boat developed a serious leak, which was eventually tracked down to three shipworms. Their larvae are microscopic and can get into any tiny crack; perhaps my antifouling was insufficient, perhaps they got in before I bought the boat and the surveyor never noticed. Either way, I had to replace three planks.

The last of my four categories contains exclusively freshwater bivalves with parasitic larvae. They all have very short siphons, so can’t live in deep sediments. In Ireland, we have three species: swan and duck mussels which are found in lakes and ponds, and the pearl mussel, Margaritifera margaritifera, which needs clean, fast flowing rivers.

Most bivalves release eggs and sperm into the water; these mix together to produce planktonic larvae which eventually settle back onto the sea or river bed where they grow into adults. Pearl mussels do it a bit differently. The female’s eggs stay inside her and are only fertilised if she inhales sperm from an upstream male. The larvae, up to four million of them, spend two  months developing in a brood pouch before being expelled. To continue their development, they have to meet a salmon or a trout. Most don’t, and are simply washed away down river and eaten by something. A lucky one will find its way into a salmonid’s gills, using its tiny shells as a sort of clamp. There it stays and grows for about eight months, after which it drops off and sinks to the bottom. If it lands in a muddy area, it will die; it has to settle on a gravelly river bed. There it might live for over 200 years, growing to a length of 15 centimetres, while feeding on organic matter filtered from the water.

M. margaritifera is now endangered or extinct in most of Europe, where it was once exploited for its pearls, though it is still fairly common in Ireland and Scotland. But the alarming thing is that few young pearl mussels have settled and survived since the 1960s – most are killed off by pollution, siltation, the dredging and tidying up of rivers, reduction of salmonid numbers (by pollution and overfishing) and smothering by the invasive and unrelated zebra mussels. A subspecies, M. margaritifera durrovensis, evolved to live in the calcareous waters of the Nore, Barrow and Suir; only about a hundred individuals are still alive, all in the Nore.

Pearl mussels might not look very exciting, but I think any creature that lives so long, has such a precarious life cycle, and actually cleans river water (the opposite of what humans do) deserves to be respected and looked after. If humans are affected by flooding, it is because their ever-increasing populations, mindless materialism and ignorance of the natural world – the real world – are destroying ecosystems and changing climates; and, rather obviously, because they build houses in areas prone to flooding. It is humans that are ruining the lives of pearl mussels (and most wild animals), not the other way around.

This month Branch Chair Jez Simms looks forward to the arrival of birds here after their long journeys from west and southern Africa.

We are fast approaching the time of year when our bird population is enhanced by the arrival of our spring migrants winging their way from Africa, whilst at the same time our myriad of winter visitors, ducks, geese, swans, waders, thrushes, and divers are all beginning to head north back to the Arctic, Scandinavia, Greenland, Iceland, and Canada.

Why do birds migrate? The main reason is to maximise survival and reproductive success by moving between seasonal habitats, allowing them to access abundant food and better nesting sites. The mechanisms that trigger migration vary and are not completely understood: changes in day length, lower temperatures, changes in food abundance and genetic makeup are all factors. For many years people who keep cage birds have noticed that migratory species go through a period of restlessness each spring and autumn, repeatedly fluttering towards one side of their cage.

Migrating birds can cover thousands of miles in their annual travels, often travelling the same course year after year. First year birds, i.e. newly fledged, often make their first migration on their own; somehow they find their way to their winter home and return the following spring to where they were born. The secrets of their amazing navigational skills aren’t fully understood, partly because birds combine several different types of senses when they navigate; compass information from the sun and stars and by sensing the earth’s magnetic field, they also get information from the position of the setting sun and from landmarks seen during the day, but the bottom line is that we don’t know all the secrets and birds continue to amaze us.

A couple of recent discoveries were learned from the new technology of satellite trackers. One was placed on a Eurasian Cuckoo in Kenya; it was expected to be tracked back to Eastern Europe but it dumbfounded the scientists by flying to China. Another recent discovery was from a Red-Necked Phalarope, which was tagged in Scotland, but instead of heading down to the Arabian Ocean as expected, it took off for 10,000 kilometres to the Pacific Ocean so, as you can see, we still have a lot to learn.

Our spring migrants will soon arrive from West and Southern Africa: The best known are our Barn Swallows and Cuckoos, but the first to arrive are usually our Sand Martins, Northern Wheatears, and Sandwich Terns. Here’s hoping we get a spring like last year when the weather conditions combined to bring record numbers of Hoopoes and other rarities, such as the Purple Heron. When the right conditions coincide, which is sadly not that often, we can get what is known as a ‘fall’ of migrants, as the birds literally appear to tumble from the skies, which is every birder’s dream.

To get a wonderful insight into bird migration, I recommend reading ‘Adventure Lit their Star’ by Kenneth Allsop. Here is the first paragraph:

‘On a late night in April in the year 1944 the north-bound migration streams, which had been slowed by a three-day storm off Eastern Spain, swelled to a concentrated intensity. During the temporary check the flow of birds toward Europe coagulated and became an armada and for all the hours of the night there was a rush of wings and a clamour of voices in the great vault above the layer of alto-stratus cloud ten thousand feet over the English Channel. Through the thin light of the moon’s first quarter the birds moved in a fluctuating river which converged upon a knob of the chalk jutting out from the English coast like the toecap of a heavy boot.’

They are on their way folks!

BirdWatch Ireland West Cork Branch News

Our next events are:

Sunday, March 22, 2026. Timoleague and Courtmacsherry Estuaries. Join us on the lookout for the waders, herons, divers, and ravens that call the estuaries home.

Wednesday, March 25, 2026. Annual General Meeting followed by a fascinating talk by John Horton (bird warden on Cape Clear Island), entitled: ‘Establishing South Africa’s First Bird Observatory’. Our AGM is a great chance to meet the team and get involved in the Branch.

Visit our website www.birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie for more information about these events. To receive news and reminders about our events join our mailing list by sending an email to mailinglist@birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie.

Facebook @BirdWatchIrelandWestCork

Instagram @ birdwatch_ireland_west_cork

Otters are special little characters, they are one of Ireland’s most charismatic wild mammals, thriving quietly along rivers, lakes, and coastlines across the country. The Eurasian Otter (Lutra lutra) is one of the island’s most elusive residents, at home in freshwater and along the wild Atlantic coast alike. Though rarely glimpsed, its presence is written in subtle signs: a trail in the mud, a smooth slide into dark water, otters slip through the landscape almost unseen. In a Europe where otters once vanished from many waterways, Ireland remains a refuge, offering clean rivers, rugged shores, and space enough for this secretive mammal to endure.

Otters have long held a place in Irish folklore and tradition. Often portrayed as clever or otherworldly creatures, they appear in stories as shapeshifters or enchanted beings. In some traditions, harming an otter was believed to bring bad luck.

Otters are highly territorial, with individuals ranging over many kilometres of waterway, marking their routes with spraint (otter poo) to signal ownership. They are agile swimmers and skilled hunters, feeding mainly on fish but also taking amphibians, crustaceans and occasionally even small mammals or birds. Otters usually rest in hidden shelters known as holts, often among tree roots, dense bankside vegetation or natural cavities. Females raise their young alone, giving birth to one to three cubs in natal dens, which can be up to 1km away from water. The cubs are born blind and helpless and remain dependent on their mother for several months. During this time, she teaches them to swim, hunt and navigate the river network before they disperse to establish territories of their own.

In Ireland, otters are not counted directly. Instead, their presence is measured by signs they leave behind — footprints in soft mud, or spraint deposited on rocks and bridge footings. These signs are searched for along stretches of river, lakeshore and coast, using methods that have remained broadly similar since the first national otter surveys in the early 1980s. This consistency allows comparisons across decades, but it also introduces uncertainty. Otter signs can be washed away by heavy rain, missed by inexperienced observers, or concentrated in places where animals prefer to mark. As a result, surveys can tell us a lot about ‘where’ otters are, but less about how many there are, or whether small changes reflect real population shifts.

The most recent NPWS Otter Survey of Ireland 2023-24 confirms that otters remain widespread. Signs were found at about two-thirds of surveyed sites, and when all available records were combined, otters had been recorded in almost every part of the country where land and water meet. At the same time, the survey suggests that otter presence has declined since the 1980s, particularly between the early 1990s and mid-2000s. The authors are careful not to present this as a dramatic collapse. They point out that survey conditions vary enormously, and that once allowance is made for factors like rainfall and surveyor experience, the scale of decline becomes much smaller and more uncertain. What does emerge clearly, however, is that pressures on rivers have increased steadily over the same period — more sediment washing into channels, more pollution, more abstraction, and more physical modification of riverbanks and beds.

County Cork stands out in this national picture. The southwest has some of the highest levels of otter occurrence recorded anywhere in Ireland, reflecting its dense river network, long coastline and generally complex waterways. This is not just a matter of geography, but of how rivers function. Otters are most often found where water is moving, banks are vegetated, and riverbeds remain rough and varied rather than engineered smooth.

This is where local studies become invaluable. A detailed survey of the River Bandon catchment, carried out by Patrick Smiddy and published in 2019, showed otters present across almost the entire river system — from the tidal estuary at Kinsale to small upland streams. Otters were not confined to the main channel. They were found regularly in narrow feeder streams, sometimes little more than a metre wide, demonstrating that healthy otter populations depend on whole catchments, not just headline rivers.

The Bandon study also highlights an important point often missed in national summaries: otters are resilient, but their resilience is rooted in intact river processes. Where tributaries remain connected, banks retain trees and scrub, and water quality is good enough to support fish and invertebrates, otters persist quietly in the background.

When the two studies are read together, a clearer picture emerges. Cork, and the southwest more generally, shows some of the highest otter occurrence nationally, making it a contemporary stronghold. Yet the NPWS survey also documents rising pressures even in these better-performing regions: siltation, pollution, water abstraction and river modification are now recorded at their highest levels since monitoring began. The otter’s continued presence should therefore not be read as proof that river systems are healthy, but as evidence that they have not yet crossed a critical threshold.

The River Bandon exemplifies this balance. Smiddy’s findings show a catchment still capable of supporting otters throughout its length, but the national context warns that such systems are increasingly fragile. Otters are tolerant animals, but their tolerance is not limitless. They disappear not when a single insult occurs, but when cumulative changes simplify river structure, reduce prey availability and erode water quality over time.

Nationally, otters are a protected species under the EU Habitats Directive. Protecting otters in Cork is inseparable from protecting river processes: maintaining natural banks, preserving riparian trees and scrub, limiting sediment runoff, and safeguarding flow regimes. Otters may be elusive, but the message they carry is direct. Where they still thrive, rivers are still doing enough things right. The task now is to ensure that remains true – not just for otters, but for the freshwater systems on which so much else depends.

The word ‘Seagull’ is a generally well-known and used name, but is it really a suitable term? The image that generally springs to mind would be of the white and grey birds you see at the beach, that shout a lot, and steal your chips or ice cream. Hence where the ‘sea’ part comes into it. Technically though, there is no such bird with this name. It is a generalised term given to an entire group of birds – gulls, which includes many different species. While many of these can be found in greater numbers near the coast, they are by no means restricted to it, with most Irish species found well inland feeding in farm fields or on lakes/rivers and so on.  

So far, twenty-three species of gull have been recorded in Ireland, with seven of these resident and breeding here. A similar number are regular visitors, recorded in small numbers annually, usually during the winter months. The rest are classed as vagrants, with some species turning up every few years, while a couple have only been seen once or twice. 

Of these, only two species tend to be found exclusively off the coast or at sea – Kittiwake and Sabine’s Gull. Kittiwakes breed around the coast in Ireland, usually on cliffs or sea stacks, and can be seen feeding in bays or out from the coast. The Sabine’s Gull migrates past Ireland and can sometimes be seen passing coastal headlands while sea-watching during summer and autumn. While the term ‘Seagull’ could be more fitting for these species, they are unlikely to be encountered much by the general public. 

If you would like to open up a new avenue of birdwatching, head down to your local beach or estuary in the winter and take a good look at any flocks of gulls that you can find. You will start to notice the differences between them and learn to pick out some of the different species. Be aware that while adults become a little easier to spot and separate with practice, younger birds can be a lot more challenging. Larger species of gulls take approximately four years to reach their full adult plumage, with younger birds showing a mix of brown speckling with features slowly changing over each year. Being able to age the bird from these combinations of features is vital to helping decide on what features to use for identification. This challenge has been taken on by a subset of birders known as Larophiles, who enjoy sifting through the finer details of gull plumage trying to find a rarer species. 

How to identify different species? A good field guide is a major help with this group. Size is a big factor, and is the easiest to start with. There is a huge difference between our smallest gull, the aptly named Little Gull with about a 65cm wingspan, and our largest (also the largest in the world) the Great Black-backed Gull which can have a wingspan of up to 165cm. While there is a range of sizes within each species and a bit of overlap, you can split them into three different size groups – small, medium, and large. There are five species that are likely to make up the bulk of what you see with size alone helping to separate some of these – Black-headed Gull (S), Common Gull (M), Herring Gull (L), Lesser Black-backed Gull (L) and Great Black-backed Gull (L). While the last three all come under large gulls, the Great Black-backed is noticeably larger than the other two. In adults, the colour of the back is another identification point that people will first notice, with the two Black-backed species having very dark grey colouring (almost black on the Great), compared to a paler grey on the other three species. Other features can also help with identification such as leg colour, bill shape/colour, head markings, wing tip colour/pattern, and the colour of the orbital eye ring. A number of these features become heavily involved when you start to look at the other less common species. 

Once familiar with our regular species, you can start to keep an eye out for anything a bit different where you could get lucky at spotting some of our rarer visitors such as Iceland or Glaucous Gulls. These birds are termed white wingers because they have all white wing tips, whereas most of our resident gulls have black tips to the wings. These birds also have very pale grey backs as adults, and when young can look almost completely white all over. These very striking birds show up in small numbers every winter.

Feel free to message the BWI West Cork branch with any identification queries or share your photos on our Facebook page. All are very welcome.

BirdWatch Ireland West Cork Branch News

Our next events are:

Early February, date TBD: See the Whooper Swans in the morning at Ballinacarriga.Sunday, February 22: Gulls and Divers at Bantry.

Visit our website www.birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie for more information about these events. To receive news and reminders about our events join our mailing list by sending an email to mailinglist@birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie.

Facebook @BirdWatchIrelandWestCork

Instagram @ birdwatch_ireland_west_cork

Lumpsuckers belong to the family Cyclopteridae, part of the very large order Perciformes. There are 23 species, but only C. lumpus is found in this part of the world; four species live farther north in the Atlantic, the rest in Arctic or cold North Pacific seas. Lumpsuckers are related to the equally ungainly and confusingly named sea snails, two species of which may be found in shallow waters around our coasts.

Lumpsuckers spend much of their time in deep water, down to about 200 metres, where they feed on planktonic organisms such as jellyfish and various small shrimp-like creatures. In the breeding season, spring and early summer, they move close inshore.  The female can grow to a maximum length of 60 cm, and when full of eggs, is an obese, almost ball-shaped fish. Males are much smaller. Colours can vary, but they are usually a dark blue or greeny grey, lighter underneath. In the breeding season, the male develops an orangey-red belly. 

 They were given the chicken-related names because of the care with which they look after their eggs. The female lays up to 200,000 eggs, in rocky crevices above the spring tide low water level. Then she heads off back out to the deep sea, leaving the male alone to stand guard, attached by his sucker to the sea bed so he won’t be washed away. At very low tides, the eggs can be uncovered and some get eaten by seabirds, but the male stays with them, even if gulls peck holes in his back. He presses his nose into the mass of eggs to ensure aeration, he fans them with his fins, and he removes crabs, starfish or other predators, as well as any detritus. He is a very good parent.

Once hatched, the young fish spend their first few months in the surface plankton. You can sometimes find them hiding in clumps of drifting sea weed; they are adorable little things, coloured bright turquoise. At the surface, they are preyed upon by seabirds. As they grow, they descend to deeper water; their remains have been found in the stomachs of anglerfish, halibut, Greenland sharks and sperm whales. A blue shark on my boat once regurgitated a small adult. Seals also eat lumpsuckers and, according to the 19th century Cornish naturalist Jonathan Couch,  know how to rip off the thick skin and eat only the soft flesh.

Lumpsuckers are not very important commercially; at least, they weren’t until recently. In Canada and the Nordic countries, they are fished for their eggs, which, when salted, pasteurised and dyed black or orange make a cheap substitute for caviar. In Sweden, it is common at Easter to have hard boiled eggs covered in mayonnaise and topped off with a dollop of lumpsucker eggs. The flesh of the females is not considered worth eating, but my old Scandinavian cookery book has recipes for ‘inkokt stenbit’ (male lumpsucker cooked in court bouillon); ‘stenbitsaladåb’ (male lumpsucker in aspic) and ‘Skånsk stenbitssoppa’ (male lumpsucker soup from Skåne).  Couch wrote that “the taste is mawkish and unsubstantial, the flesh dissolving in the mouth like mucilage or oil”. However, Man has found another use for the lumpsucker. 

Most fish have external parasites, generally known as sea lice, though they are not lice but  crustaceans, either copepods or isopods. The latter are large – like woodlice; the parasitic copepods are much smaller. Many are host specific, e.g. garfish are mostly parasitised by an animal called Caligus belones; the blue shark by Echthrogaleus coleoptratus. In the wild, fish either put up with the parasites, or they go to special places where they know that cleaner fish, especially species of wrasse or shrimps, will be waiting. Sharks carry their own skin-care specialists with them – remoras, those strange fish related to scad whose dorsal fins have been converted into large suckers. 

Garfish often have many parasitic copepods on their gill covers; very large infestations result in holes bored right through the bone into the gills. It is thought that their habit of leaping out of the water is sometimes an attempt to rid themselves of parasites. In early summer in Sweden, garfish migrate from the North Sea, through the Kattegat into the Baltic, where, in less saline waters, the parasites fall off. Similarly, wild salmon collect ectoparasites at sea, and when they migrate into rivers to spawn, the parasites die. But when large numbers of salmon are kept in cages at sea, the parasites have a wonderful time: they eat the skin, flesh and mucus of the salmon, creating open wounds which can cause stress, the introduction of diseases, death and, of course, loss of profit. So fish farmers have to add chemical delousers to the water to kill the parasites. Unfortunately, such chemicals are probably harmful to other crustaceans, so now cleaner fish are kept in the salmon cages. Most of these cleaners are various species of wrasse, but it has been found that lumpsuckers grow more rapidly than wrasse and survive better in colder waters, so since 2011, they have been bred specially and used in Norwegian and Scottish fish farms. 

Biological control of pests is obviously better than using chemicals, but life for cleaner fish in salmon farms is not much fun. Caged salmon, unlike wild fish, are not always grateful for being cleaned and will eat their cleaners. And while wrasse are natural cleaner fish, lumpsuckers are not; studies have found that not all of them like eating sea lice and many die of starvation. Lumpsuckers in the wild can live up to 14 years; in salmon cages, they rarely last a year. So the poor lumpsuckers are forced into an unnatural existence, starved of their normal prey, sometimes attacked or infected by salmon, not allowed to swim into the shallows to breed, and unable to use their suckers to rest on the seabed. They have been turned into tools, not considered as sentient animals. Here again, nature is made to suffer, like the seabirds and cetaceans deprived of food by the capture of sprats and krill to make fish meal for fish farms. But most people don’t think about such things while they nibble their smoked salmon canapés.   

I got to know lumpsuckers for a different reason. Many years ago, my academic career having stalled (there wasn’t much demand for garfish experts) and my old angling boat rendered illegal and uninsurable by new safety regulations, I taught myself fish taxidermy. I thought that with all the anglers who used to fish from Courtmacsherry, some might like to have their best catches mounted and preserved for posterity. They rarely did. But a friend of mine, a commercial fisherman, used to bring me odd fish to examine; they were already dead, so I thought I might as well make use of them. In four years, I prepared 104 fish, including wrasse, lumpsuckers, trigger fish, gurnards, dragonets and boarfish, as well as many crabs and lobsters that had gone bad. The easiest to work on were lumpsuckers: they have no scales to fly off, their skins are tough and leathery and their skeletons almost totally cartilaginous. And when mounted, grotesque as they were, lumpsuckers proved the most popular. 

But it wasn’t a successful venture, and I barely made enough money to pay for plaster, paints and preservatives, which was just as well – I wasn’t happy trying to earn a living from dead animals.  And that was in the nineties when, so it seemed, the Celtic Tiger was bestowing second homes, third cars and Polish au pairs upon the humblest of villagers (and removing much of Ireland’s traditional amity), while I was still living in a leaking caravan, alone but for a fat cat and dozens of unwanted stuffed fish. That is why I went abroad and became a wandering school teacher. 

Drat proofing windows.

As the new year dawns, many of us are setting ambitious personal and professional goals for 2026. I know personally that if I achieve even half of mine, I’ll be doing well! Having said that, it’s also a great time to extend that ambition to our homes. This year, resolve to make your living space more comfortable, energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly. Retrofitting isn’t just about massive, whole-house overhauls; it’s about making smart improvements that deliver lasting benefits.

Snug Seals – The First Step to a Warmer Home: One of the easiest and most impactful ways to begin your journey is by tackling draughts. Unwanted heat loss via air leakage occurs all over the house. I see lots of these unnoticed gaps around windows, doors, and pipework on my visits around West Cork. The secret culprits force your heating system to work harder and your energy bills to rise.

Resolving to seal these gaps can make an immediate difference, creating a noticeably warmer home from day one. It’s a simple resolution that pays dividends. You can do a lot of this yourself with a can of expanding foam and a roll of draught excluder. Open chimneys are also a huge source of heat loss. If you aren’t ready to fit a stove or block the chimney up completely, consider a chimney balloon or even an old pillow as a temporary, removable seal.

Bright Savings – Illuminate Your Way to Efficiency: Another ‘quick win’ is upgrading your lighting. Swapping old bulbs for energy-efficient LEDs is a no-brainer. LEDs use significantly less electricity and last much longer. They now come in a wide range of colour temperatures to suit any room, allowing you to reduce your carbon footprint without sacrificing a cozy atmosphere.

Beyond the Basics – Planning for a Greener Future: Once you’ve tackled the quick fixes, consider your larger ‘Green Goals’. Perhaps this is the year for better insulation, ensuring your walls and attic act as cozy layers against the elements. Or maybe you’ll explore the benefits of a heat pump or solar panels.

Even if you don’t start the physical work this year, you can take the most important first step: Planning. A Home Energy Assessment (HEA) is essentially a roadmap for your upgrade. It includes an existing BER (Building Energy Rating) to show where your home currently stands, along with a detailed report outlining your options.

The HEA provides estimated savings in carbon and fuel bills, an outline specification and details on available grants. Crucially, this plan ensures that any work you do now won’t jeopardise future upgrades or cause unintended consequences, such as poor ventilation.

A HEA must be completed by an SEAI-registered technical assessor and costs in the region of €550-plus VAT. (Note: a grant is often available toward this cost if you work directly with a registered One Stop Shop).

Making your home more energy-efficient is a powerful resolution that benefits your wallet, your comfort, and the planet. By taking small, manageable steps – or a few larger ones –you can significantly reduce your footprint and enjoy a more sustainable year ahead.