Although this hasn’t been a particularly museum-heavy trip,
today Josh and I decided to get away from the cities and head out to Connemara
National Park.
The land for the park was
gathered from a variety of initial owners, including the Kylemore Abbey
(a very beautiful place we passed it on the way to
the park) and the founder of the SPCA, Richard Martin. The park apparently boasts some interesting
history, including megalithic court tombs (4,000 years old), but we were just
there for the hiking. So, up and up we
went.
Since I will not do the beauty of Connemara justice, here
are some words from a more poetic author: “Then there are the grand bare
mountains,… with caprices of sunlight playing about their solemn heads, and
shinig into their purple depths; and below are waters untraceable and
incalculable.” (Harriet Martineau, 1852)
A pair of local hikers who started just before us seemed to know all the best photo spots, so we just took their lead as to when to turn around and appreciate the view. The rest
of the time was spent watching our step on the slippery rock steps. This was particularly true as we neared the
top and the wind picked up. At that
point, the fog was so thick it was impossible to see anything beside the rock,
anyway. After summiting, we picked our
way back down the slope with care, pausing to watch some sheep forge their own
path up the mountain.
Speaking of sheep, they are EVERYWHERE in Ireland. We haven’t seen a vegetable farm yet (though
that may be a function of the season), but there are fields full of sheep,
cattle, and horses everywhere we go. Out
by Connemara, the human population density is even lower than normal and the
sheep apparently roam free. It was not
unusual to see one of them munching the ungrazed inch or two of grass alongside
the edge of the road, which is a bit spooky on roads with no shoulder. The Connemara sheep also had another distinct
feature: they were painted. They all had
a slash of bright color on their shoulders or – most commonly – their fluffy
butts.
Blue and red were most common,
but we also saw green and one rebel sheep rocking purple. We weren’t sure whether these markers were
for identification of one farmer’s sheep versus another’s, making them more
visible to passing cars, or both, but the sheep looked rather ridiculous.
Morning hike complete, we drove to Ashford Castle, a five
star hotel (probably would be a ten star hotel if that existed) with gorgeous
grounds.
While posh guests were led
around on horses or ran their dogs along the river, we wandered through the
gardens back to the School of Falconry.
There, we met our guide, Ed, and began the most interesting afternoon of
our trip. We had guessed that there would
be four or five birds, but they actually had at least 20. The majority were Harris Hawks, the only
social birds of prey and therefore the only ones that will fly with
strangers.
While they looked big and
puffy as they sat on their perches, they only weighed 1.5-2 pounds. The school also had a Peruvian Harris Hawk
(the others are North American) whose beautiful speckled pattern distinguished
her. There were also two falcons – one
peregrine and one peregrine-saker hybrid (basically the labradoodle of birds,
meant to combine the speed and bird hunting abilities of a peregrine with the
ground hunting abilities of a saker).
Behind them sat a tiny little guy named Napoleon who is a Merlin. And then for fun there were two owls,
including one named Dingle (more about him later). After we had learned about a million cool
bird facts from Ed, we put on our gloves and took out two of the Harris Hawks,
Sonora and one with a Gaelic name that sounded like Fomer. The hawks would fly into the trees and then,
when we raised our arms, back to our gloves.
Harris hawks can maneuver incredibly well, so we would have them weave
through tree branches and brush to get to us, and they had no trouble at all. The birds had clear personalities, even after
only an hour with them. Sonora managed
to find some mushrooms up in a tree, which apparently she finds delicious, and
Ed had to produce increasingly exciting treats (beef chunk < chicken leg
< chicken head < quail wing < whole quail) to bring her back. Similarly, at the end, Fomer got full and
made it clear that he would have to be bribed back down. The negotiation was hilarious to watch. Ed, with elaborate pageantry, would wave
around a treat and ceremoniously put it in one of our gloved hands. Fomer would waggle his tail, betraying his
interest, then turn his head to the side to feign disinterest, the bird
equivalent of walking away while haggling.
Eventually, the bribery proved too powerful and he swooped down to join
us. After the hawks, we had a chance to
fly Dingle, the beautiful owl.
He had
these incredibly expressive eyebrows that were all the way down when he was
focused and hungry and gradually raised up as he became full, like a natural
content-o-meter. We learned that having
the owls was sort of just for fun, since they aren’t good hunting
partners. They won’t allow you to swap
their catch for a treat, so you can’t take their prey and eat it yourself. Still, flying Dingle was a definite
highlight. Because owl vision isn’t
great (unlike the hawks, whose visual acuity is 8-10x that of humans), Ed had
to wave a treat right in Dingle’s face, then wrap an arm around him and run
away from us (which looked like kidnapping every time as Dingle’s enormous eyes
stared back) to get far away from us before Dingle broke away.
Dingle would fly low to the ground before
swooping up to our gloves and gulping down his treat.
Between flights, we would
try to pet Dingle’s fluffy feet. Because
of his poor vision, though, he would try to strike everything on the off chance
that it was food, so you had to be quick.
Tired after a long day, we made our way back to Galway to
rest up for our final day in Ireland.
Spotted: Ewes! We’re
not sure why, but the ewes have appeared in the last couple of days. We didn’t see any until today, but now
they’re in nearly every field, wandering around on tiny fluffy legs next to
their mothers. They don’t look young
enough to have just been born, so perhaps they were kept separately until the
recent warm weather.
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