Every day in autumn I am drawn to St John’s Point’s black-and-yellow-striped lighthouse, the tallest in Ireland, to immerse myself in the solitude of nature, to listen out for birds and to look out to sea. Above the rhythm of breaking waves the seven whistles of a whimbrel might be all I hear, or the shrill ‘kleep’ of an oystercatcher. Little else. What peace! I like it most when a strong wind is blowing onshore, preferably from the southeast and accompanied by squalls and poor visibility. On such days I might stay out all day, my black lab Django by my side. The idea of staring through a telescope for an insane number of hours on an exposed headland does not have wide appeal – I’m usually seawatching alone, or with my son, Tim. For us, seawatching is a drug. The worse the weather the better: gale force winds and rain, yes please!

Few parts of the world can match the British Isles for the richness of seabirds that gather each summer to breed on its bountiful islands and isolated rocks, or pass offshore each autumn, sometimes in spectacular numbers. Of the twenty-five regularly breeding seabirds in Great Britain and Ireland all but two, Leach’s petrel and little tern, regularly pass St John’s Point. Often, all that the casual observer needs is a pair of binoculars to marvel at a constant stream of seabirds of a dozen or so species. Red-throated diver, gannet, kittiwake, razorbill and Manx shearwater are some of the point’s staple species, while black-throated diver, Sabine’s gull and storm petrel can provide the icing on a really good seawatch. Thousands of auks, gulls and terns commute between the open sea and fish-rich shallows of Dundrum Bay, while more pelagic species such as skuas will enter the bay in pursuit of food or temporary respite before resuming their course.

One bird, above all, is symbolic of the Celtic seas: the magical Manx shearwater. Mesmerising in its flight, alternating black above and white below, the Manx shearwater effortlessly banks from side to side, rising and falling on its long slim wings, masterfully freewheeling through peaks and troughs; sometimes, when travelling between breeding and fishing grounds or on migration, for hundreds of miles at a time. It has no fear of the sea. Coming to land, which the adult birds must do in order to breed, is another thing. With set back legs designed for swimming not walking, shearwaters are easy meat for predatory gulls and their kin. Which is why they only come ashore under the cover of darkness. Some days there are many more Manxies passing St John’s Point than the 10,000 that breed nearby on Lighthouse Island, which is one of the three Copeland isles that lie just outside the mouth of Belfast Lough. So it must be assumed that birds are being drawn from the much bigger colonies to the north and south: Rum in Scotland and Skomer, Skokholm and Middleholm in Wales, which between them account for 80 per cent of the world population of c. 370,000 pairs. The scientific name, Puffinus puffinus, comes from puffin, originally meaning the cured carcass of the nestling shearwater but later, confusingly, also that of the unrelated puffin. The common name originates from the Calf of Man – visible from St John’s Point – where possibly the largest colony of all once existed, though few breed there now.

Manx shearwaters, like most seabirds, are long-lived. Scientists at Copeland Bird Observatory have been monitoring the colony of Manxies since the observatory’s foundation seventy years ago. One shearwater ringed in the 1950s was more than fifty years old when last observed. Another, caught and ringed on Bardsey Island in 1957 as a breeding adult – so already at least five years old – was subsequently caught on four more occasions, most recently in 2003, confirming it as one of the oldest recorded birds ever. During their half-century of annual journeys to and from wintering areas off the coast of Brazil and Argentina they are estimated to have flown 5 million miles (8,045,000 km) – more than ten times to the Moon and back.

Raising a Manx shearwater chick is a lengthy affair, spanning almost four months. For the first two months after hatching one of the parents remains with their single offspring in the burrow while the other goes out to sea, returning after several days with a full crop of partly digested small fish and squid. The chick is literally fattened up over the next few weeks, with both parents bringing food. The young bird then remains alone in its burrow for a further eight to nine days before it embarks on its maiden flight entirely unaccompanied – quite an adventure after having lived underground until then. Manx shearwaters lead exciting lives: after the exhausting business of breeding it appears they like to party, spending the winter in the coastal waters of South America: Copeland to Copacabana! Their return migration, beginning in March, carries them northward across the Equator to the Caribbean, where they pick up the Gulf Stream and head out over the North Atlantic, arriving at their Celtic island sanctuaries from mid-April onward. At St John’s Point Tim and I will be waiting to welcome them home.

Chris Murphy, 2016