Return of the

By LORCÁN O’TOOLE

In the winter of 1171-72, the invading King Henry II came to Dublin and gathered all the Irish tribal leaders, Cleathí or Chieftains, and forced them to eat crane meat for dinner. They were shocked, for it was taboo to eat your sibling cranes at that time, but the Norman King was making a point: those old natural ways and Brehon rites, were now obsolete. He forced the Céilí Dé bishops to summit to the Church of Rome. The hunting and bounty driven persecution of cranes then began and lasted around 430 years. The celebrated trumpeting crane spring flock return, stamping out winter’s frosts ( Coscar =Victory) was lost, the evolving natural tribes and cultures lost their precious ancient thread to their past.

But now, centuries later, a pair of cranes, breeding in County Offaly in 2022, have fledged two young. It is the first recorded successful breeding of cranes in Ireland for over 400 years. It is known that cranes bred at the same site in 2019, 2020 and 2021. A pair of adult cranes and a fledged chick were also seen at Rogerstown Estuary in Dublin, on the 5th September 2020. An ancient candle, flickering in a new era.

The adult pair of cranes were seen back on the breeding grounds since midMarch 2022. They were incubating eggs by early-April and the chicks had hatched by mid-May. The adults and chicks were seen feeding on a range of bogland, wetland and farmland food items, across the summer months. The adult cranes and both chicks were spotted over nearby farmland, adjacent to the Bord na Mona bog site in late August, 33 days after the chicks had first fledged. Presumably, they then migrated to south-west France or

Spain for the winter.

As some of the Irish bred chicks return, to breed in Offaly themselves over the coming years, they too will be able to find suitable breeding sites if they are also afforded some nest protection and freedom from disturbance.

Shane O'Neill of the Golden Eagle Trust recalled that, “It was with great delight that I observed the return of the solitary Midlands pair of Cranes, in Spring 2022. Firstly, hearing their trumpeting call and then watching them pair-bond on Irish soil once again, was an immense privilege.

After the chicks had in fact hatched and as the year moved on, it was hearing the cranes call from that deep cover that gave me hope that this could be the year for a first successful fledging of cranes in Ireland. Seeing all four cranes fly together was such a moving moment - knowing that this native and previously extinct species was once again breeding and flying in Irish skies. The support and cooperation of landowners adjacent to the State-Owned lands is very strong and this feels like just the start, for this iconic Irish species.”

We suggest the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and Bord na Móna should utilise this opportunity to use this breeding site, via pro-active management, to induce their offspring to occupy other numerous adjacent breeding territories. The Golden Eagle Trust have been providing NPWS staff with all our crane monitoring data. We hope that the NPWS can formulate a national crane conservation plan, with the aim of expanding the current population to 5-10 pairs over the coming decade, expanding out from this central nucleus pair.

Whilst the battle to conserve Irish nature is imminent and immediate; an effort to re-appraise 850 years of Feudal culture and its rejection of natural affinity, is also important. There may be very obvious reasons why the evolving sanctuaries of the ‘Celebrants of Creation’ ( Céilí Dé ), were expunged from our shared cultural memory by the imposition of Feudal philosophy.

When we try to imagine tens of thousands of cranes before the 1600s, it is vital we focus on Gaelic or Old Irish meanings. We know cranes were the third commonest pet noted in Gaelic Brehon

By Fee Joyce

Law manuscripts. It is possible that early Irish beliefs evolved from a crane culture associated with the origins of Irish dance, burial practices, the Corlea Bog trackway, crane mythology, the crane bag legend and the ancient taboo on eating cranes. A reverence for cranes, if proven, may help explain the confusion around thousands of townland names, or tribal names with Cor prefixes. There are so many possible cognate words, deriving from crane symbolism, found across the Irish language; cóir, cór, comhair, comhar and córas for example – all hinting at an advancing cultural outlook.

Cranes were strongly associated with Anchorites (An-Chor-ites - “Pure crane feather”! in Scots Gaelic) and probably with the early ethos of the ‘Celebrants of Creation’ or Céilí Dé movement. Maybe we should look again at the evolution of the natural Brehon Laws. It is not impossible, that we have been deflected from the ways of the “Brí-h-oin” (and all the variants of én, eoin, eun & éan of the ancient past, signifying ‘birds’ and strongly associated with ‘oneness’ and ‘water’, too).

In time, Cranes may help our society retwine that forgotten past cultural and natural web and understand how that natural approach was sundered across centuries by European dynasties who hated communalism (Fuath-Dáil). As the 2023 spring approaches, we await the returning Irish crane family’s return from their European wintering grounds. We could even allow ourselves contemplate whether the old Brythonic and Old English word “Brid ” (nowadays spelt ‘Bird’), whispers of an ancient bird culture!