The birds of Arranmore Island captured in a book by Mike Glynn

The first field guide to the birds of Arranmore Island, Éin Árainn Mhór/Birds of Arranmore has been compiled by Mike Glynn. The 157-page book which was initially written in Irish, carries an English translation and includes descriptions and summaries of 104 species of birds and a further listing of 61 less common visitors to the island.

Mike has been birdwatching since he was nine-years-old, he said: “One of the things that started me off was that Musgrave Tea Blenders issued a pack of cards, a little pack of twenty-five cards and I collected them all and we swapped them at school.”

Mike has been living on Arranmore Island for 5 years. He worked for many years as a civil engineer and later lectured in IT Carlow. Mike has been considering the book for over 4 decades, he said: “I feel that the book itself is quite comprehensive as in it doesn’t leave out a lot. If there were people diligently surveying on the island they may come across a few more but I would say that most of it is there.”

One of Mike’s main pieces of equipment is his binoculars and he normally has a pair with him in the car at all times. He finds when he is traveling out to the mainland or into the island he sees beautiful birds along the way, he said: “The last day when I was waiting to go into the island, I was looking quite closely at a great northern diver and not everybody would have seen one of those and not everybody would know what it was. It visits this time of the year and you will see it in the water between the island and the mainland.”

He regards the snowy owl as a local bird. It has appeared around four times and stayed for months on the island. Mike says that the people of Arranmore are very observant. One day he was approached by a local farmer who said there was a small bird that wasn’t very common to the island appearing in his field. 

“So, I said to him describe it to me - he gave me a description there and then that was good enough for me to go into the house and bring out a bird book, open it at the Snow bunting and ask him if that was the bird. ‘That’s the one,’ he said. He had given me such a good description that I knew exactly which bird it was,” Mike says. 

The Tipperary native said islanders often send him photographs of birds to help him along with his research. He has also gone into the local schools to talk to them about birds: “I sparked a good interest in people over the years who have now gone into the area, deeply now which gives me great satisfaction. It has been a big part of my life until now and little did I think I would still be marching the same road and learning stuff sixty years later. It is an amazing pastime and a really interesting aspect to watching birds is migration,” he said.

The birds come and go to the island. The geese will soon leave the island and go to northern Canada, the Thrushes that come in from Scandinavia and Iceland will go back to breed there and then a migration from the south that wants to be in the temperate climate to breed will come to settle on the island, for a while.

“The Arctic Tern will breed in a few places in Ireland including a place near Arranmore, it will go to the Arctic zone and it will then go to Antarctica and it will then come back here again,” he said. 

He added that there are more Corncrakes on Arranmore than there used to be: “We actually have increasing numbers of Corncrakes on Arranmore from May to July. You can hear the Cuckoo and Corncrake together sometimes but there are some birds that disappear and there are certain waders that you don’t see around,” he said.  

His favourite bird, over the years, is the Yellowhammer but he also loves the Stonechat which he sees on the island. Mike loves island life: “I absolutely adore the place and Grania absolutely loves being back home.”

He can often be seen on the beach with telescopes and equipment over the last five and a half years. The couple lived in Carlow for almost thirty-eight years.  

Mike has kindly decided to donate the profits from Éin Árainnmhór to the community centre in Arranmore and the Chairperson of the CFFAM, Anna Uí Ghallachóir, thanked Mike for his kindness to the local charity at the recent launch. She also thanked the Glynn family for their support over the last number of years through their Róise Rua Festival donations, which enabled CFFAM to upgrade the premises to host the new Arranmore Post Office, which otherwise would have been lost to the Island. 

Mike’s wife Grania is native to Arranmore and he had been travelling to and from the island for over forty years before the couple made Arranmore their permanent home, he said: “A lot of people came on board to do things as a community project. We had a great launch, we were expecting that perhaps sixty people would turn up but over a hundred people did so the place was packed.”

The UCD graduate has written many articles over the course of his life but admits a book is a different story. 

A keen photographer, most of the pictures in the book are his own. However, Niall Hatch of Birdwatch Ireland kindly gave Mike thirty-five photographs from renowned photographers to use in his book without any cost. Mike’s first cousin’s husband, Martin Kenway, in Conwall, who has similar interests to Mike also gave him a few photographs. 

Mike said the book is a great reference book for islanders and for day trippers who go to the island. 

“Because it is written primarily it gives people the opportunity to learn Irish by doing something else and something they enjoy,” he said.

The book was designed by his son-in-law, Jesse Smith.