Baltimore Oriole, Cork

The first week of October 2001 was busy, but also deeply frustrating. First there was an abortive attempt to get to North Ron for a Siberian Blue Robin (the very few who successfully twitched that bird have their own interesting tale to tell, which I won’t spoil here). Then the Grey Catbird broke at South Stack: plenty of big listers who’d tried for the robin couldn’t get more time off work, and very few saw it on the Friday.  So then there was the awful debacle that was the Saturday of the catbird, an experience so dreadful that many birders simply wouldn’t talk about it for years afterwards (though now thankfully all behind us after the Land’s End bird).

Scarcely had I recovered from all of that when mega alert went off again. On the Sunday, 7 October, news broke of a Baltimore Oriole in Cork. In Baltimore, no less. The symmetry is not as perfect as I once thought – many Irish people set sail from Baltimore to the New World, fleeing the potato famine in the hope of a new life, but the city in Maryland was named after Lord Baltimore, an Irishman himself, whose country seat (Baltimore Manor) was in Longford, not Cork. Nonetheless, the bird got named after the city (and the baseball team after the bird), and then, fittingly, the first Baltimore Oriole for Ireland turned up in the town which shared its name.

A few British birders (including Jez Robson and Andy Clifton) who had stayed over in Anglesey to dip the Catbird again on the Sunday had been in good position to jump on the Holyhead ferry overnight, and they scored on the Monday morning, as did the keenest Irish birders. At one point one of the British contingent, trying to get on the bird, apparently asked, ‘Where in the hedge is it in relation to the orange thing?’, only to be told, ‘It is the orange thing!’ 

(As an aside, a Baltimore Oriole on Bryher in the 90s was found by a non-birder staying at the Hell Bay Hotel, who apparently gave one of the best descriptions I have ever heard – ‘like a Starling in a lifejacket’!)

James and I piled down to Plymouth for the Cork flight, which ironically went via Bristol – we might have saved some money (and stress) by going from there, though we still would have arrived on site at the same time. And by that time the bird had disappeared, and we dipped horribly. Bumping into Irish birder John Coveney and seeing his pics of the oriole taken that morning really didn’t help. We were not alone, though. About half a dozen of us, including Rich Bonser, wandered around for the afternoon trying and failing to locate the bird, then booked into the local hostel for the night.

Down to the pub then, and a bit of excitement when in walked the actor (Tony O’Callaghan) who played Sergeant Boyden in The Bill! A few of us watched the show regularly, and Rich couldn’t resist going over to talk to him. It turned out he was on holiday in the area, and we ended up with him sitting with us for a while – nice chap (think he might even have bought us drinks). It was a lively enough evening, then, but we couldn’t help but notice a pennant from Baltimore, Maryland proudly displayed behind the bar. And on it was a bird. As we chatted to the barman while getting another round in, he asked us, ‘So what bird was it you were looking for, lads?’ We pointed – ‘That one!’