The name Oxford Island is reputedly a corruption of Hawksworth’s island, after a tenant who lived on the peninsula in the 17th century. But when I peer into a sharp wind across Lough Neagh, Antrim’s northern shore is over the horizon, Tyrone’s is vague, and it’s hard not to be persuaded by the alternative derivation of ost-fjord (Old Norse for east inlet). If Viking longboats emerged from that offing, I’d scarcely blink.
This place has long been water and ground of shift and change. I’m walking on earth yielded over the course of four lowerings since the mid-19th century. The lake once brimmed to that head-high bank of mature woodland. And, as I pause to admire the candlesnuff fungus on a mossy crumbling stump, my gaze snags on something fussing at the path’s edge. The grey squirrel rears to stare back.
Across the mouth of Closet Bay, scores of overwintering cormorant huddle in the trees. A flash of white on the water is another piscivore: a great crested grebe briskly scanning the surface.
I reach the shelter of Kinnego Bay’s hide, where Helen Averley’s huge painting portrays an epic of wildfowl converging on Lough Neagh, from Iceland, Scandinavia and beyond. Looking out, I breathe more deeply. This is what I’ve come for.
Multitudes of coots – residents and visitors – are sweeping vigilantly across the water. Yet the various rafts of ducks are like an invitation to drift and dream. I zoom in.
A tufted duck’s crest tousles to a quiff as he dozes. Something stirs the pochards and the males’ bold panels of black, grey and tan become merely a foil for their garnet eyes; females have prettily smudged sideburns and their brown eyes are rimmed lichen-green. Scaup, hunkered among the tufties, share their slightly stunned-looking yellow stare. As if they can’t quite believe where they have woken up.
There’s a fluster between coots. One swims off with a demeanour of anxious triumph and a bolus of weed crammed into its shell-pink bill. Close to the reeds, a dabchick wrestles with a silver minnow. Moorhens putter. A sudden chink in the clouds and the water glints phragmites-gold.
