The Land Of Chocolate

Germany.

As the Simpsons put it - Ze land of chocolate.

I'm here for an occasion of craic, my Brother's stag weekend.

But over the past week I've become more and more preoccupied with the long term presence of a certain Black Browed Albatross.

I no longer class myself as a twitcher...so instantly you now realize this post is about twitching.

Filthy twitching. Unashamed, blatant, unabashed, unforgivable twitchage.

I won't offer any attempt at rationalization. I don't think I need to. It's an albatross.

I am writing this, as I move over the course of the trip, like a sort of live blog.

An explanation is a pre-requisite. Why, am I currently on a train headed out of Hamburg, headed towards the coast? I should be beering it up with my brother at this very moment. Indulging in Germany's finest currywurst washed down with a cold weissbier, ja?

The "friendly racism", as I like to call it, will likely only increase in this post over time.

Memories from a whopping 18 years ago, and even further back actually, are floating around my mind today, as I dust off my German language lessons from school.

Thus far I have successfully bought my train ticket, asked for directions, bought some of said currywurst (breakfast of champions, right there) auf Deutsch, so I'm not feeling too bad about ms. Whatshername's 5 years of strict, gut you for the slightest infraction, German instruction. I would even buy her a pint at this point. Job reasonably well done.

18 years ago or so, I was on Cape Clear for my first ever, pure, unbroken seawatching trip.

A whole week where myself and Ciarán Smyth would end up living off sandwiches, chocolate and beer, which we were technically too young to purchase. If that sounds awful to you, best stop reading now.

The trip went well. Back in those days large Shearwaters seemed guaranteed in late summer, regardless of the weather. Over the course of the week we ended up averaging a new species of seabird a day, starting with Bonxie and Sooty Shearwater, moving on to Great and Cory's Shearwaters, and then the jewel in the crown, a stunning Fea's Petrel.

At the time, in the late 90s, Feas (or Softy) as it was then, was still mythical. Few birds on the Irish list were comparable in terms of beauty, rarity, desirability and sheer "f*ckin-hellishness". I can still remember, with perfect clarity, the sheer, manic-depressive begrudgery in the voice of Eric Dempsey when I called him to report the news.

"You're lying. Ah you are, you're lying. Go on so. Give me the details, you bastard."

Good times.

It was, understandably at the time, termed "The Holy Grail" bird.

We scored it in 4 days.

And yet, this is not the most potent memory of the trip for me. It's up there, but that title goes to 3 paintings which rested above the bar in Ciarán Danny Mike's pub.

Evenings spent drinking here meant one eye was constantly looking over these paintings. The 3 paintings were of Feas, Wilson's Petrel and Black Browed Albatross. The Trinity.

Could I have known then, at 17, that I would go on to see double digits of Fea's in Ireland? No.

Nor could I have known that I would go on to see so many Wilson's petrels, now tallying at over 50 from land in Ireland.

But Black Browed Albatross. I've never even come close.

I always assumed I would. I went seawatching so much, I simply assumed, one faithful day, an albatross would pass me on Galley, or Mizen, or the Bridges of Ross.

I honestly never foresaw a scenario where I would not one day find one.
Things, as they tend to do, change.

So now I find myself at the confluence of fate. Circumstances demand my presence on foreign soil with a Black Browed Albatross in tasting distance.

It does not fit the model I had for seeing one. This does bother me. Like all twitching, it now feels somewhat wrong to me. Like time wasted.

I still have not seen Tengmalm's Owl in Finland for this very reason. I could be taken to a nestbox somewhere, have it opened and look down at those mad eyes in the dark. That's not the image I have in my head though. I can't bring myself to do that.

How will I feel twitching this bird? Should I be successful, likely mixed feelings. I can already feel the excitement building.

However, the energy, the pulse of a seawatch won't be there. Will that be anticlimactic?

On the other hand, should it be there, I will likely have far more time to watch and enjoy the actual bird, possibly orders of magnitude longer than I could manage on a seawatch.
Will that make the difference?

The train glides through the German countryside and reminds me much of home.

Home home.

Take away the Carrion Crows, Marsh Harriers, White Storks and seemingly ubiquitous solar farms and this could be Ireland.

There's fields, cows and windmills akin to those at Carnsore or Cahore. It even looks like rain. Typical.

An hour from Sylt, and the rain starts. Perhaps I'll get that seawatching experience after all? Or at least the associated weather.

Between showers, two enormous White-Tailed Eagle float over the train, and the illusion of "home home", however thin a veil, is torn, reminding me again of "Home", Finland. This strange point between the two.

Surely, if I see this bird it will feel meaningless? Devoid of context or attachment to anything truly familiar.

2 stops from Sylt and the rain slams in hard. The habitat is now coastal mudflat, thronging with more waders than you could count.

Across the sea is a solid wall of rain and mist, above which sits a grey sky, dark with the promise of humidity driven lightening and cloud burst. A scene I can only describe as apocalyptic. It was not looking good.

The impending Apocalypse

A few kilometers down the track, and the train pulled into glorious sunshine at Sylt station.

I jumped in a cab, and made my way directly to the site. As I walked around the corner and onto the embankment, I raised my bins to look at what I supposed was the now legendary flock of swans, and there, gliding and wheeling over them, was the behemoth.

"F**********CCCCCCCKKKKKK"

Heart racing. Pulse pounding. Sweat inducing behemoth.

Any thoughts of disappointment or twitching guilt gone. At the end of the day, an incredible bird is still an incredible bird, regardless of context.

I walked up the bank to a sluice area and enjoyed good bins views as it sat amongst the swans. A troop of birders on some sort of guided trip then appeared and I unapologetically mooched in amongst them and managed to obtain some brief scope views and even a few record phone-scoped images.

Just as this band of birders were leaving, the bird lifted, again gliding and wheeling back and forth over the swans. And then suddenly it came right at us, right in front of us and then over our heads, barely more than arm's length. Over. Our. F*cking. Heads!

I felt any words simply catch in my throat. I stopped breathing. This thing was immense. Utterly, utterly monstrous.

The bird made its way, with the same two and fro flight style, away from us, and then rose, high, over buildings, trees and off towards the seaward side of the island and out to sea.

In all I had watched the bird for half an hour before it had disappeared. One train later and I would have dipped.

I then began to walk back along the embankment enjoying some birds that are rare, scarce or absent from Finland.

Little terns were abundant, as were sandwich Tern. Plenty of knot around, and a couple of med gulls were the first I had seen in two years. A gull billed tern was a nice surprise as was a distant avocet.

I made it back to the main road and chanced my arm hitching. I was picked up instantly, much to my surprise on such a narrow road, and dropped at the train station just in time for an Express train back to Hamburg.

How am I feeling now, with the Trinity complete?

Elated, deeply satisfied and ever so slightly smug. I won't attach any level of spiritual experience to it. That's not in my nature. But damn it was good.

And I genuinely feel like something, inexplicable, has been laid to rest. A nagging in the back of my mind, put there by those paintings, and tales from the likes of Eric Dempsey, Phil Davis and Denis O'Sullivan (the glimpse and glance crew).