"We have a national tree, haven't we?" he said, "so why shouldn't we have a national bird?" And what was his nomination? You won't believe it; it was the crow, or more correctly, the rook. And why did he particularly choose this bird? Because, he said, he saw the ultimate cleverness of this bird the other day.
His wife had for long hung out a sort of net of half inch chicken wire which she regularly replenished with slabs of cooking fat. This was largely for the blue tits and others of that ilk? They had to hang upside down to get at it. Finches can peck at things from the side, holding on fiercely, but none can, he said, stay completely upside down while they feed. One morning he gets up and sees two rooks under the fat. One after the other they spring up the six feet or so and cling, upside down, tit like, for as long as it took to get a good snack.
Now rooks, he explained, have always been his favourites because of their comic walk - as if they had wet their pants, he said - and because they make nice comforting noise, in winter as they pass overhead in hundreds and thousands to their night resting place. They exhilarate you when they start tumbling in the wind, no bird more graceful at this time. And dammit, he said, they are everywhere unlike our national tree, so called, the sessile oak, which not one person in a thousand can recognise.
He would accept other nominations, of course. The heron, now that's a dignified looking bird. So upright and apparently calm. "Reminds me of my old Chief, de Valera". Or he would take note if someone suggested the kingfisher - what noble colours. Or the gannet, for strength and daring.
He is looking for suggestions. But where, having got them, does he take his mission? Of course, no farmer will vote for the rook, though people who write bird books tell us frequently that while they eat root crops and grain to some extent, they earn their keep by destroying wireworms and leather jackets and perhaps some other pests. Shakespeare had, he said, a memorable snapshot:
Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood.