by gearóid ó muilleoir THE scenes around Lough Neagh were extraordinary on Sunday morning just hours after Storm Boelo hit. The sky had brightened to reveal a different land, one that had been tossed around like a salad. And the birds – those who had survived – were desperately trying to get to grips with this new world. Dúlra and pal Squinter were driving in the direction of the old abandoned Northstone sand facility at Sandy Bay, but such were the amazing sights that we had to keep stopping – and not just to remove fallen trees and bushes from the road. At one stage a giant buzzard swooped towards the car, followed by a pack of angry crows. We pulled over to get a better vew of their argument and three more giant buzzards appeared a matter of feet from us – all of them sparring with the crows. Four buzzards! This was no normal day. While we were at the side of the road lapping up the skirmish on our binoculars, a man approached. “You Fibrus boys are certainly on the ball,” he said in a thick County Antrim accent. “What’s that?” we said, reluctant to turn away from the flock of buzzards. “You’re here to fix the internet, aren't you?” His was one of the thousands of households who lost power in Storm Boelo – and he thought we were out at first light to fix the power lines that trailed along the road. “Sorry, we’re just birdwatchers!” we told him apologetically. He trudged back to his bungalow while the two city boys watched the buzzards and crows fight an amazing aerial war, the buzzards batting off the crows like they were cheap drones. On we went. A sparrowhawk appeared from a hedgerow and flanked our car for 100 yards just feet from the driver’s window like an escort – who knew sparrowhawks on patrol fly at exactly 30mph? A few minutes later we saw two male pheasants watching us from a laneway like ornaments at a doorway. We stopped at the lough to admire hundreds of greylag geese on the shore just in from Iceland, their honking drowned out by the howling of the wind and the crash of the high-rolling, white-topped waves. It was clear Boelo was reluctant to leave. The most unusual experience – and certainly a first for Dúlra – was having to take extra care on the loughshore road not to drive over birds. You might imagine that these birds could be geese or pigeons or even starlings – but no. The storm had blown not only branches on to the road here but lots of mud and soil – so much so that tiny, bobbing birds were feeding away in this new and insect-rich environment. Grey wagtails don’t usually have much interaction with cars in their river habitats, but the storm had driven them inland. They bobbed a few feet ahead of the crawling car, at times disappearing from view under the bonnet before talking off further up the road to continue feeding. It was a slow but entertaining journey to the sand quarry. The derelict Sandy Bay site is like a scene from War of the Worlds. Rather than returning the shoreline to its previous form, the big company has just left the massive machinery to rust. Rust-red iron tubes run from the shore like tentacles to a pylon-like tower that looks like a triffid. Here countless tons of sand had been dredged from the lough over long decades, and all lough bed life forms are ripped out with it. Most of the sand goes to make concrete, but the sand has also been used on Croke Park’s playing surface, the grounds of Stormont, bunkers at the famous Lough Erne Resort golf course and during the upgrading of the A8 from Belfast to Larne. We’ll probably never know what massive environmental damage has been done from all this dredging, but fish had long since disappeared before the latest algae poisoning that has made international headlines. For every boatload extracted, an English absentee landlord by the name of Nicholas Ashley-Cooper – also known as the Earl of Shaftesbury – gets a cut because he ‘owns’ the Lough Neagh bed. It’s a fitting title – because we and our lovely lough are truly being shafted. Sand is still being legally extracted from the lough at a newer facility just a couple of hundreds yards along the Shore Road at a much-reduced rate, but it’s still a disaster for a unique and precious ecosystem that is dying in plain sight. Nature, of course, doesn’t give up without a fight. Water-loving young alders are sprouting from the ground alongside lanky willows all across the ghostly site and there were plenty of signs that nature is using the rusting hulks like it would wizened trees in a forest. In one old workers’ hut, swallows had built a nest on top of a light fixture, and there was what looked like the nest of a flycatcher wedged in under the wire of an outdoor light in another outbuilding. We stood on the shore here and felt Lough Neagh’s raw, storm-driven power heaving still against all her foes. It has been badly wounded, but the spirit of Eachach and and his wife Ébhlinne – who gave Loch nEathach its name – lives on. •If you’ve seen or photographed anything interesting, or have any nature questions, you can text Dúlra on 07801 414804.
