Golden plovers have been on my mind ever since I stopped by to meet Frank Power, a farmer and retired butcher in Clarecastle, just south of Ennis in Co Clare, earlier in the week. In winter these birds are drawn to lowland farmland, where they forage for beetles, grass, worms, snails, berries and spiders. Any bird with “golden” in its name gets my attention, but when the summer breeding season ends, golden plovers trade their strikingly high-contrast, gold-speckled black plumage for feathers with a subtler, more muted, buttery tone. Over the past six weeks or so, golden plovers have begun arriving from Iceland, which is home to a third of the world’s breeding population. In southern Iceland, the golden plover population has declined by 6 per cent per year over the past 14 years.
