In Drimnagh, a walk with the “evening chorus”

The sky is low and grey over Drimnagh on Thursday evening, and Lansdowne Valley Park is bursting with spring.

The Camac River rushes through the valley, slicing deep into this strip of green between the housing estates of Drimnagh and the hum of traffic along the Naas Road.

The narrow, snaky park follows the river’s course, as it flows between meadows – some mown, some unmown and overflowing with grasses and wildflowers and roving pups – and into dark, dank stands of trees, their branches meeting across the water.

A dozen people are gathered inside the park gate, across Davitt Road from the Blackhorse Luas stop, for an “evening chorus” walk organised by the Inchicore Environmental Group.

This time it’ll be Ian Stevenson leading the listening, and helping to identify the birds whose songs the group will hear as they ramble through the park for an hour or so.

“This is the first of many,” says Deirdre Lewis, of the Inchicore Environmental Group.

Spotting the singers

“That’s a buzzard over there,” Stevenson says, pointing to the sky above the Luas stop across the street.

Lewis lifts her binoculars to see the raptor better, way up high, a silhouette against the back-lit, unbroken grey cloud cover.

They are unusual, standing out among the standard black scopes other members of the group are using.

They look old, with brass bits, and green-oxidised bits, and maybe some leather wrapping.

“They’re actually my favourite possession”, World War I field glasses that once belonged to her great grandfather, she says.

Stevenson turns the group around now, leading them away from the gate and into the park, heading south along the river’s edge.

Next to the path grows a tangle of stems and leaves and flowers.

Enagh Farrell points out cow parsley, with its upside-down chandeliers of tiny white blossoms, horsetail, like clumps of mini-bamboo, and alexander, with its bursts of yellow flowers.

Despite the noise of the wind stirring the trees and grasses, the wildflowers, and the blackberry brambles – and despite the traffic on the Naas Road – the birds can clearly be heard singing in the park.

They are raucous, chatting to each other, scolding each other, serenading each other.

“That’s a robin singing now,” Stevenson says.

“That’s  wren, it has a little” – he makes a tuck-tuck-tuck sound – “in its song that sounds like a machine gun”, he says.

“That’s a goldfinch,” he says, pointing up ahead, towards the source of a trilling sound.

As he points to each, a collection of binoculars swings this way and that, following his directions to try to spy the singers.

Learning from experience

Herring gulls circle above the group as they walk deeper into the park.

To the right of the path, on the sloping, grassy hill rising from the other side of the river up to the road, a magpie – chest white, tail black, flash of iridescent blue – chases a gull off his patch.

Stevenson raises his arm and points to a bird fluttering down to land on a patch of blackberry brambles on the hillside not far from the magpie and the gull.

“See that, that’s a dunnock,” he says

To the left of the path, a hillside rises up, unmown, dotted with fluffy globes of dandelion wishes, and pointillist spatters of buttercups.

There’s a rustle, and the waist-high grasses and wildflowers rattle and sway. Something’s clearly in there.

“What’s that?” Farrell says.

A little black and white dog, nose to the ground, rushes out of the greenery and into a clearing, snuffling.

The group continue along the path, and the open fields give way to a stand of trees on both banks of the river. It’s dark under their canopies, and the Camac burbles along among their roots.

Three magpies sit together on a branch above the river, like friends on a park bench, watching the world go by.

A bird bursts into song up ahead. “That’s another blackcap,” Stevenson says immediately.

How did Stevenson learn to tell one trill, one whistle, one tuck-tuck from another? “You just learn from experience,” he says, walking at the head of the group.

Go out with someone who knows more, and listen to what they have to say, and remember it, he says. Like on this walk this evening.

A changing cast of characters

The group reaches the far end of the looping paved path, where it turns away from the river, up the hill, and heads back to the entrance gate.

A blue tit bullets across the sky ahead of the group, from a tree on the left of the path, into the trees on its right. “They’re like little gymnasts,” Farrell says.

The group of bird listeners meets a group of dog walkers headed in the other direction, draped in leads, flanked by a pack of happy outriders.

They exchange greetings.

After the dog walkers pass, Stevenson points ahead. “There’s a grey wagtail,” he says. “That’s nice to see.”

“Some people think it should be called a yellow wagtail [because of its yellow breast], but there’s already a yellow wagtail,” he says.

A cold breeze cuts through the group. “Jaysus it’s chilly,” Lewis says, raising her field glasses to try to get a look.

Stevenson strolls on. “I was here the other day and there was a chiffchaff, just passing through,” he says as he goes.

“You could come down here every month and see different birds, couldn’t you?” Farrell says.

“You could come every day and see different birds,” Stevenson says.

By the time the group reaches the entrance gate again, back up towards the Luas stop, they’ve seen and heard 20-some different birds.

The bird listeners say their goodbyes, and head their separate ways, into the deepening dusk.

“Ian’s great, isn’t he?” Lewis says as she heads for the gate. “He just ambles along and knows things.”