Nestling in at Brackloon

At this time of the year we share the castle with its longest occupants; the birds. From the time Brackloon was built about five hundred years ago crows, starlings and various birds have been returning here annually. Each had their own specific housing requirements, the smallest sheltering in the tiniest holes, the starlings in the deep gunholes and the crows at the very highest levels.

Alison named this little Great Tit ‘Howie’ and he (or she) has been sheltering at night, first in a tiny garderobe window and then in an equally tiny opening in the stone machicolation box three stories above the front door. Each evening, just before it gets completely dark, he announces his arrival by tapping on the glass. Under the front door canopy, a wren very occasionally flits in and out when winds are strong but he or she usually is found at low level around the hedge in front of the castle.

The starlings are our most constant companions, here for much of the year. These sleep, chatter and nest in the deep gunholes set into the walls of what is now the main bedroom. Their nests, built up over years, have partially obscured the internal glass covering the gunholes. We can still see their dark silhouettes as they settle in for the evening but it is when the young hatch that we are most conscious of their presence. As the gunholes are located all round the room, their hungry chirping begins in stereo surround sound all around the bedroom when they wake around 5.30 am and their parents bring them their breakfast. To extend our experience, starlings often hatch twice during the year.

At the moment, these gunhole starlings and those nesting below the battlements in what were formerly roof drainage channels, are spending more time during the day indoors and it may not be a long wait until the chirping of our early morning wake-up chorus begins.

The most recent activity has been the crows beginning to nest. The biggest of our on-site nesting birds, they make considerable noise fighting among themselves on the roof in the mornings. Barely visible below one side of the bartizan, the projecting stone battlement defence on the corners, are the twigs and branches of one nest only newly constructed last week. As I sit at the table in the kitchen at first floor I can hear beaks thumping against the stone wall the far side of the large fireplace. This fireplace was originally a window, blocked up possibly in the early 1600s. The narrow blocked opening of that former slit window still survives externally and there the crows are building another annual nest and making an occasional racket banging off the wall on the other side of the fireplace.

The ground outside the front door is covered with twigs. This year, for the first time in memory, the crows are trying to build in the underside of the big stone machicolation box high above the front door. A transparent floor in this box means we can see their efforts from the upper room but so far they haven’t been successful. Only the first few twigs, forming an ‘A’ shape to begin, have remained in place and the rest have ended up on the gravel below or on the canopy roof over the front door below.

The crows don’t lack intelligence in how they form a secure structure for their nests but it only dawned on us recently that they have also had a very accessible supply of building material this year. After recent winds had scattered broken branches and twigs in the area around the castle, we gathered them up in a wheelbarrow. We now realise this wheelbarrow full of twigs has become the crow’s equivalent of their local builder’s providers. Next year the crows may not have such a convenient source of house-building material to hand!

All the best, Donal and Alison

#LifeInAnIrishCastle