A CHANCE meeting in the famous MacCarthys Bar in Castletownbere led me to a man by the name of Alex Scade, or ‘The Birdman of Allihies’ as he’s affectionately known.
He owns a bird sanctuary, and people from all over bring him injured birds that he helps nurture back to health.
A customer in the bar I had casually conversed with hailed from Ballydehob and had stopped off in MacCarthys on her way back from the sanctuary. She had brought to Alex a dove that she and her teenage daughter had nursed for some time.
“It just flew away when I got there,” she laughed, “he has emus, geese, an owl, a hawk. He’s just out the road.”
I arranged to meet Alex.
After taking the first left after Dzogchen Beara, I meandered down the windy and rocky road to his sanctuary, hoping that my google satnav stayed within range and led me to my destination, which did not have any obvious signage.
On arrival, Alex greets me at the gate.
“Eh, ya got here,” he says, with a thick Glaswegian accent.
When I get to the top of the road, next to his house and right in the middle of the sanctuary, no sooner is the car door open when a brown and white terrier jumps in behind the driver’s seat.
When I turn to exit the car, an emu appears to greet me. There’s a first time for everything! Suddenly a second appears. Then a goat, some geese, and two other terriers. There are three terriers in total: all identical, to my eyes.
“They’re a father, mother and daughter,” Alex says, as I pat one of them.
An espresso aroma circulates around his wooden home, while Alex prepares us a coffee and I prepare for the interview.
“What I do here is I look after injured birds, that’s what people bring me. Sometimes I’ll get a fox or something else, but it’s mostly birds.
Alex, a painter and decorator by trade, moved to West Cork in 2001. An avid traveller, he found himself in the region nd fell in love with the place and decided to stay. “I just knew this is where I wanted to be,” he says.
He grew up in the Dennistoun area of inner-city Glasgow, which drew a lot of seagulls, something that he says lent itself towards his comion for birdlife.
“I grew up next to a railway, and there were a lot of trains with carriages full of fish that was going to be turned into fertilizer. There were always seagulls around, so the place was always buzzing with wildlife, even though it was the city,” he recalls.
Alex Scade at his animal sanctuary.
Sitting on a beam above where the interview is taking place is an white owl watching us chat. Almost like she’s making sure I’m going to do right by Alex.
“Her name is Pha,” he tells me. “After an Egyptian goddess”.
Pha lives there permanently, as do the emus, the hawk, the geese and the goat.
Alex decided to purchase the emus after he saw them at a fair in Killarney. He and learnt that their certain fate was the meat market.
“I just didn’t want that to happen” he says, while making our coffees.
“But I don’t feel like I own any of them,” he adds, referring to all the animals on site.
The sanctuary sits on two acres of land which he purchased through loans.
“This is a credit union baby,” he says.
“I bought it in 2005. There was nothing here. Some cows, I think.”
While his comion, human touch, and the land on which sits, provides much-needed respite for injured birds, Alex enlists the help of local vets.
“Loop Da Loop, a local shop, sells second-hand books for me. And that pays the vets’ fees for the year. People drop in second-hand books and that raises some money.”
When he’s not taking care of birds, he repurposes his painting and decorating skills to make pieces of art. Like the painting-cum-sculpture piece of a bird-like being that overlooks his bed.
“It’s some kind of ancient being,” he says. “I just started it one day”
Out of all the birds that have graced his sanctuary, the ones he finds most interesting are gannets.
“Then most outlandish birds I think are gannets - gannets are amazing. They’re really separate from us. You know, they’re out there in the deep, in the wild. They only do one thing in their life; they dive for fish. They can be very affectionate as well.
"I had a gannet here for three years. She only had one foot. So, I’d say a gannet would be the most extraordinary bird.”
So how would Alex like to see his sanctuary develop? What next for The Birdman of Allihies?
“It’s finished. Like, you know, I need to get a fence, but it’s finished essentially. Because if somebody find something that’s injured, this is a place they can bring it to.
“So, if somebody sees a bird on the side of the road, they can pick it up and bring it here. And that’s what the purpose of the place is.”
If people would like to Alex’s work, they can do so by popping some of their used books into the holistic health shop Loop Da Loop in Castetownbere. They have a book basket on the shop floor from which they are sold, and all funds go towards local vets’ fees.
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