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February

Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white;

And reigns the winter’s pregnant silence still...

– Helen Hunt Jackson

Glendoher, 4 February

After a seeming unending series of rather dull, overcast days with a damp mist hanging in the air, January morphed into February, and spring finally arrived in Glendoher. It always begins with a quietness. At the end of winter there is often a lull, a calm, as nature composes herself and works behind the scenes for the next great thrust. I wonder, was it this quietness that led the Romans to dedicate 19 February to Tacita, the goddess of silence? There is an acute feeling of expectation in the gardens and in the woods and on the hills, the buds on trees and shrubs are almost bursting with tightly vacuum-packed herbage and ready for their big moment. During the last weeks of winter there are occasional ‘pet days’, with an hour or two of warmth borrowed from June, as if testing is taking place, or an assurance is being given, a ‘trailer’ of what is to come. I feel that if I listen hard enough on these quiet days, I will sense the hum of the boundless power that is being held in check in all nature, awaiting the signal to burst gloriously forth in colourful rebirth.

Sometimes it seems to me that it is the widespread outbreak of birdsong that makes the first announcement of the arrival of spring. The blackbird that I have heard practicing on all those dark winter mornings is now note perfect, and its mellow tunes can also be heard in the early dusk. The song thrush announces its arrival in the area, and becomes daily more melodic as the days lengthen. My mother used to tell us, as children, that if we heard a call that sounds like ‘cherry-dew, cherry-dew, cherry-dew’, it was probably a thrush.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy unlimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,

in blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

– Thomas Hardy, ‘The Darkling Thrush’

Glendoher, 6 February

Today is startlingly bright and sunny for a change, and there seem to be a lot of birds competing for the same territories. Five or six blackbirds are constantly on the go in the garden, and long-tailed tits in our Himalayan birch are almost becoming a common breakfast-time sight. Teresa saw a flock of waxwings nearby in our housing estate, and was particularly enthused about their brilliant yellow-striped tails and their crests.

I had to go into Dublin city this morning, and I walked almost a mile along the Owendoher River to reach the bus stop at Rathfarnham. Up until the end of the nineteenth century the waters of this fast-flowing mountain stream were harnessed to run many mills in the area. There was a paper mill and a linen mill at nearby Edmondstown, a mile or so south of Glendoher, and the same water that powered them continued northwards to serve another two paper mills at Newbrook and Bolton Hall, and a woollen cloth mill at Millbrook, which occupied a site just across the field from our back garden. Today, however, water mills only exist in place names, and like many small rivers, the Owendoher is ignored, which has allowed it to become a secret wilderness corridor that, shrouded with foliage, slices through the concrete and tarmac and noise of suburbia. For most of the stretch that I walked to Rathfarnham, the surface of the water was three or four metres below the pavement, curtained off from it by an old stone wall and a thick cordon of ivy-clothed trees and shrubs. Along the way, however, there are places where the wall is low, and in wintertime, with no leaves on the trees, those who are interested are afforded a view into the watery oasis. The river is lined with ash, sycamore, chestnut, oak and conifer trees, unmanaged by man, some dead and hollow, and others leaning over and trailing liana-like creepers in the rushing waters.

Today I saw that the chestnut trees are already sporting their big, sticky buds, and I noticed a couple of escapee apple trees opening delicate green and pink blossoms. Ivy is rampant along this wild corridor, where it reigns unmolested. Although hated by gardeners, it is a most valuable natural resource, providing secluded nesting locations and food for many bird species as well as habitats and late nectar for myriads of insects. It is neither parasitic nor invasive, and it takes its nourishment from its own roots, clinging to rather than penetrating the bark of trees it uses to climb to the sun. Sometimes, however, if it is not controlled, it can so weigh down elderly trees that they are vulnerable to being up-rooted by winter storms.

In places the short stretches of riverbank were covered with the pale green disks of butterbur and escapee flowers from gardens, and buddleia bushes and fuchsia, which we can expect to bloom as the year goes on, were plentiful. The birdsong along the river this morning was continuous, with chaffinches and wrens leading the chorus. Some years ago I recommended to the local authority that they build a pedestrian boardwalk along the river to allow people to access this wonderland. A small section was indeed built, but then they ran out of money and the work has not proceeded. I, for one, am glad.

Our garden at Glendoher is never without the robin’s tinkling song, and the redbreast seems so much more tame at this time of year. The naturalist Richard Jefferies, in his final essay before his death in 1887, could have been talking about the robin when he wrote that ‘the bird upon the tree utters the meaning of the wind – a voice of the grass and wild flower, words of the green leaf; they speak through the slender tone. Sweetness of dew, and rifts of sunshine, the dark hawthorn touched by breaths of open bud, the odour of the air, the colour of the daffodil – all that is delicious and beloved of spring- time are expressed in his song.’

It is strange that what sounds serene and beautiful to us is really, to a rival male bird, a forceful diatribe of threats, boasts and warnings. Birdsong is a multi- functional operation; it is used to attract mates, intimidate enemies, stimulate an urge to build nests and, of course, certain call notes, like the harsh click-click-click of the wren in the nearby bush, are specifically to warn of danger. The experts tell us that birdsong is controlled by the sex hormones, and is an invaluable tool in the setting up and maintaining of a territory. Singing, for a bird, actually takes the place of fighting – what a marvellous concept! When two rival birds with adjoining territories are proclaiming their supremacy, it somehow seems to be a rule that they don’t sing together. When ‘our’ wren comes to the end of his vehement scolding song he pauses and, sure enough, his nearby rival wren, perhaps fifty metres away across the field, gets his turn to shout back!

However long the winter might seem to us today, imagine how it must have been in early times, a deeply anxious time and a matter of life and death. Family or communal stocks of food, carefully preserved and stored since the previous autumn, would have dwindled week by week, and people would daily be watching for the signs that growth would soon begin again. Some organised and long- established communities had the advantages of knowledgeable priests and great astrometric megaliths to help foresee the winter solstice, but for most, it was only the barely discernible changes in the landscape around them that might herald the return of the time of plenitude and the knowledge that they would not starve. In Ireland there were no pristine crocus petals or gleaming, drooping snowdrops to signal the approach of warmer weather, because these plants were imported from Europe much later. Spring-bringers such as the delicate white blossoms of wood anemones on sheltered woodland floors would be watched for, and, near watercourses, alders would be examined to see if their purple catkins were unfolding. The first show of the mist of tiny leaves of celandine in the soil would raise communal spirits and lead to preparations for the celebration of the feast of Imbolc, the festival of spring. The earth goddess Brigit, the exalted one, would be praised and thanked, as many centuries later, her Christian persona, St Brigid, would be similarly honoured.

For many today, those subtle signs of seasonal change go unnoticed and no longer seem to have any practical purpose. The artificial bubble that urban dwellers inhabit restricts connection with nature, for many, to their small suburban gardens, and I believe that many have grown out of the habit of ‘knowing’ nature. Those who work or spend leisure time in our countryside or on the hills are amongst the fortunate ones who can still be full observers, or even participants, in that wonderful transition of winter into spring. As the winds and rains and darkness of winter recede, it is a time of year that can be particularly magical for those who have the opportunity to experience it at first hand.

Kilcop, 9 February

When February arrives and the darkest days of winter are fading, Teresa and I feel a need to visit our cottage at Kilcop, which we usually close up for the winter around the beginning of November. Nearby Woodstown strand is a most peaceful place at this time of the year – the beach and seascape still and sombre, the only sounds the plaintive cries of seabirds and waders with a backing of tiny waves shuffling carpets of cockle shells. It usually takes me forty minutes to walk the beach without a halt, but today I found myself stopping frequently to watch and wonder at the great flocks of brent geese and oystercatchers quartering the mud flats. The coast of west Wexford across the harbour and Creadan Head extending out towards it from the Waterford side, were visible, barely, through a curtain of haze. Ink- black cormorants, wings outstretched to dry after a morning’s fishing, were perched on the gaunt, black poles of an ancient weir which stretches out into the tide. The sun strained to burst through the overcast and it cast a silver light on the bay, which appeared as a series of silver and grey slices, forming a backdrop to the flights of brent geese coming and going.

A dog darted away from its owners walking the beach, and created havoc as it splashed out towards the assembled flocks of gulls and waders grazing the mudflats. There was an explosion of pumping wings as varieties of gulls jostled into the air with an assortment of oystercatchers, wimbrels and geese, in the midst of which, looking incongruous, there was a lumbering grey-backed crow.

When the sky is clear, the early setting sun washes the vast expanse of Woodstown bay in a special light, reflecting off the ancient cliffs of Wexford across the way, and picking up, like tiny pinpoints, whitewashed houses scattered along the low-lying landmass. Every evening the great host of rooks that have their tree-top city in the beech trees that line the grounds of Ballyglan House launch themselves from their branches in a noisy celebration, wheeling and diving and chasing, and filling the air with a cacophony of caws.

Teresa and I had a memorable rook-related wildlife experience after a walk on Woodstown beach at dusk one evening. Creadan Head extends a couple of miles out into Waterford Harbour, and we saw a myriad of rooks gather over its northern shore, a host of black dots, and as we watched they began to stream towards us in a long line. As the flying circus of birds neared the beach on which we stood, many of them dived and skimmed across the water offshore, inches from the surface. Their calls filled the air as they swooped up fifty feet or more and headed for the abundant tall beech trees in the Ballyglan demesne. Even as the first ragged black birds wheeled and turned into the trees, the following line of birds still stretched back across to Creadan, where a circling mass of them awaited their turn in the convoy. It was an amazing sight, and we stood transfixed for about twenty minutes as the movement took place, until all the birds, with the exception of a few stragglers, lined the branches of all the leafless trees in Ballyglan, continuing their chorus of caws.

Rooks are plentiful throughout Ireland. All the better to perform the task that nature designed them for, ridding the landscape of carrion, parasites and unwanted debris of all kinds.

Kilcop, 11 February

Looking out the kitchen window today, I was surprised at how far I could see down the garden through the sparse winter foliage. I could see trees and bushes that are hidden from the window at any other month of the year. As I looked, I saw, in the midst of the grey matrix of branches, a puzzling splash of gold. I had to go out and down into the garden to find out what it was. About fifteen years ago Teresa’s sister gave us a gift of a very small hazel, a tree that long ago got lost in the burgeoning shrubs and trees along the east side of the garden. It was this hazel, or more accurately, its catkins, that had caught my attention. Prompted by the sunshine of the last couple of days, the little overshadowed tree had proudly put forth its version of flowers in the form of long golden catkins, called, in some country areas, ‘lamb’s tails’; I think probably the first time it had produced them. In common with a number of other species of tree, the hazel is mainly pollinated by wind: when the time is right, these catkins will release clouds of yellow pollen, seeking the tiny carmine stigmas, female flowers, protruding from buds on the same or a nearby tree. The pollinated flowers develop eventually into hazelnuts with woody shells, protected by bristly bracts.

Hazel was one of the first trees to spread through Ireland after the last glacial period. Some experts believe that parts of the south of Ireland were not covered by the ice sheet and existed as an area of tundra during this time. It is possible that some hazel grew in sheltered parts of that tundra, and as the ice sheet retreated north, these hazels spread north after it. In places like the limestone-rich Burren in County Clare, hazel thrives in scrubland, and individual trees can reach heights of six metres. Largely forgotten today, in the past it was one of our most important trees. Its nuts were an important food source when man arrived in Ireland, and copious amounts of shells have frequently been found in archaeological excavations of Neolithic sites. Hazel trees were coppiced from earliest times to produce rods for making coracles, cradles, fencing and traditional baskets of every sort. Hazel rods were also used in the wattle and daub walls of houses in the early towns of Ireland, and water diviners often use forked hazel twigs. And we must not forget that St Patrick is said to have used a hazel rod to drive the snakes out of Ireland!

Kilcop, 12 February

A number of my coppiced ash trees are mature enough to harvest, and I have spent today felling them. Coppicing is a system of obtaining a regular harvest of wood; it involves felling a tree, ideally an ash, and leaving a stump about 900mm high. The mass of roots under the ground will continue to feed the stump, and so, when the growing season comes around again, the tree will put out new shoots. The ash tree produces very vigorous growth, the shoots getting up to more than a metre high in the first year. I reduce these to half a dozen shoots, allowing all the growth from the original stump to flow into the selected shoots, and after about seven years they have become a cluster of young saplings, each with a diameter of 100–125mm, ready for easy harvesting. In winter and early spring, before the sap rises, these saplings are easily felled, without having to deal with great amounts of leaves, and the process begins all over again. Today’s harvest is my third here, and will provide this winter’s fuel for our stoves in Kilcop and Dublin. Little coppicing is carried out today, but a careful examination of old hedges in the countryside will often reveal old, long-abandoned coppiced ash trees; they look like a half-dozen mature trees growing from the same base.

I also spent some time today working on our hedges. Bare of foliage at this time of year, individual hawthorn branches can be seen, and it is possible to access and lay some of the bushes. Laying a hedge turns it into a growing matrix of vertical and horizontal spiky branches, a living fence; it is a very ancient craft, certainly practiced since the Neolithic period. In early Christian times Irish farmers grew thick thorn hedges on the top of the banks of their ringforts, which would have been impenetrable to all but a modern tank. In attempting to lay our hedges, I am following the example of the late Tom Hayes, the man who sold the field to us. He was an old-fashioned farmer, and to pass the field out of his ownership in good order he laid all the hedges before handing it over. When I am working at laying the hawthorn and blackthorn, his labour in doing this work forty years ago is often revealed deep in the hedge, in hoary and ancient-seeming horizontal branches, a legacy of his good husbandry.

There is an art to laying hedges, as I have discovered over the years. Selected shrubs or young trees in the hedge are sliced through, near the ground, with a sloping cut, slicing in 80 per cent of the thickness of the trunk or branch. A bill hook or a hand-axe is the best tool for the job, but in recent years I have seen men use chainsaws, which the purist would certainly regard as sacrilege. The sloping cut goes through the heartwood, but leaves one side of the bush’s sap-wood protected by its bark. The cut trunk or branch is then bent over: the sap continues to rise and growth therefore continues out along the branch, which will put out new vertical shoots. The end result, after a few years, is a hedge thick with thorny horizontals and verticals.

Over the years, I have planted many trees in Kilcop, and I am in awe of how fast they grow and change our little world here. Apart from being beautiful and useful, the tree is a magnificent natural engine, playing a significant role in combating erosion and moderating climate, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, generating oxygen and acting as a highly efficient carbon sink. There are more than 50,000 different species of these amazing and often-ignored plants, and they are among the largest living things on our globe.

In former times, while many rural folk could obtain peat to keep them warm in wintertime, the majority relied on timber. There were severe penalties for cutting down or damaging trees, most of which had been planted by the landlord class, but the country was well clothed in rough forests and thickets, and the poor collected whatever wood and sceachs (bushes) they could find for their fires. This may be one of the reasons why, in the early photos of the Irish countryside dating from about the 1860s onwards, there is hardly a bush to be seen. The gathering of firewood, or connadh, was one of the main tasks of winter, and many illustrations of the period show old people bringing home a great bundle, called a brossna, of withered branches or heather for the fire.

I have learned that some species of trees are better than others for burning, and one can be guided by a poem by Honor Goodheart, ‘Logs to Burn’, which was printed in Punch magazine in October 1920 and passed on to me by my brother Tom:

Logs to burn! Logs to burn!

Logs to save the coal a turn!

Here’s a word to make you wise

When you hear the woodman’s cries.

Beechwood fires burn bright and clear,

Hornbeam blazes too,

If the logs are kept a year

To season through and through.

Oak logs will warm you well

If they’re old and dry

Larch logs of pinewood smell

But sparks will fly

Pine is good, and so is yew

For warmth through wintry days

But poplar and willow too

Take long to dry and blaze.

Birch logs will burn too fast,

Alder scarce at all.

Chestnut logs are good to last

If cut in the fall.

Holly logs will burn like wax –

You should burn them green.

Elm logs like smouldering flax

No flame is seen.

Pear logs and apple logs

They will scent your room,

Cherry logs across the dogs

Smell like flowers in bloom.

But ash logs, all smooth and grey,

Burn them green or old,

Buy up all that come your way

They’re worth their weight in gold.

Ash is one of Ireland’s most common trees, and a good candidate to be our national tree: some of the largest and most magnificent native trees in the country are ashes – there is one on Marlfield Farm near Clonmel which is over 40 metres tall and 2.7 metres in girth. It is widely known as the wood from which hurleys are made, and the sport generates a need of over 200,000 each year. Unfortunately, less than 20 per cent of these hurleys are made in Ireland today, and so the rest have to be imported. Ash, as I have found, is also one of the best Irish firewoods, and can be burned even when freshly cut. There are many arcane uses of ash, including tapping them for sugary syrup, which can be used to make ash wine, or using the bark in a footbath as a treatment for sore feet, but in Kilcop we haven’t got around to these yet.

We have, over the years, planted a variety of vegetable and fruit crops in Kilcop, but our firewood crop has been by far the most successful. I built little drying barns from waste timber and roof tiles, and it is my pleasure to stack my harvest of logs there to allow them to dry out, usually over a period of about eighteen months. So I get warm felling the trees, sawing them into logs, and finally burning them in our fire! The thinner branches and twigs, and ash have a lot of such, are gathered up and woven into the old boundary hedge, helping to make it impenetrable.

lapwing

Glendoher, 13 February

We drove back from Waterford to Glendoher after a night during which the temperature had plummeted, and the countryside was a magic winter scene with every tree, bush and blade of grass frosted brilliant white. Passing through County Carlow, we marvelled at the flocks of lapwings that have always been a feature of our winter journeys to and from Waterford, although each year there seem to be less birds. Lapwings are one of my favourites; they look as if a mistake was made when they were being designed and for some reason they were given the wrong wings. They are so graceful-looking on the ground, but when they take flight their broad and awkward plank-like wings do not seem to belong to their slender bodies. They nest in open ground, and are well-known for the trick of feigning injury if you approach their nest; they will limp and drag a wing as if it is broken, all the while leading you away from the nest. There is an expression in Gaelic, ‘cleas an philibín’, which means ‘to act the lapwing’, or try to fool people. Lapwings and their eggs were highly regarded as good food in former times, and the birds were sold in large numbers at markets, and even exported from Ireland to Liverpool as late as the nineteenth century.

Hellfire Hill, 15 February

Even if it is a bit early, we enjoyed a quick trip up Hellfire Hill yesterday to see if the frogs had arrived yet for ‘frog-fest’, as we call it: those few days each year during which frogs come from all points of the compass to assemble at a body of water for the annual mating.

The wind, a warm blast from the south, was extremely strong and gusty; as we ascended the stretch leading to the south pond, it increased dramatically, hurling and whistling and hissing through the trees. The south pond on Hellfire Hill is spring-fed, and when I first saw it in the 1970s it measured six metres long by about nearly three wide. Long before the hill was planted in forestry in the early 1960s, when it was a farmland patchwork of stonewalled fields, the pond served to water the livestock, probably cattle and sheep. It is too small for fish, and although the newts it used to hold are long gone, it still is much frequented by frogs, particularly at spawning time. It is a wonderful tiny water world, an aquatic jungle with a community of interdependent bacteria, plants, animals and insects that have provided me with interest and entertainment for many years. I always pause at its edge, and each time, even in winter, when little stirs, I learn a little more about pond life. Because this pond is in the open and receives plenty of sunlight, it is a particularly rich habitat, but its proximity to the forestry road used by family walkers makes it vulnerable to frog-spawn collectors and dogs having a swim. Hellfire Hill is owned by Coillte, and they frequently carry out works here, seemingly without any concern for the viability of the pond or its teeming but mostly invisible occupants. I have found, in recent years, their ecosystem’s husbandry to be poor at best; with regard to this particular pond I warned Coillte years ago that it was a newt habitat, and that their works were endangering these scarce creatures, but my warnings have been ignored. There are no newts there today.

The pond water was clear yesterday, with only a wind-induced ripple to blur the underwater scene, and initially there was no sign of life. After a few minutes of careful observation, however, we spotted tiny, black, immature leeches scattered on the muddy bottom. Leeches are blood-sucking worms, of which there are 16 different species in Ireland, and 500 worldwide. Their general anatomy is much like that of an earthworm, but they have very specialised features, such as suckers to help them move, much as a caterpillar does, and an ability to attach themselves to a fish or animal and suck its blood. It is fascinating that such a small creature can have such complex parts, including a mouth that is designed to inject an anaesthetising substance so that its host is unaware that it is being ‘got at’ while it slits open the skin and has a meal of its blood. The leeches in the Hellfire pond in wintertime look a bit like the spines of a spruce tree lying on the bottom of the pond: at this time of the year they measure about 6–8mm long.

As I was counting the leeches on the bottom of the pond, a water beetle emerged from cover, and quickly breast-stroked across the pond from one clump of weed to another. As it did so, a sudden blast of wind nearly tossed me bodily into the water, so we left the pond behind and continued on our way. On the north side of the hill the wind was gusting powerfully, punching the trees with a great hidden fist, bending them over at impossible angles. It almost seemed, however, as if the trees were enjoying the violent molestations, revelling in swinging back to their original postures as soon the latest gust passed by.

Instead of taking the lower road past the north pond, we dropped down towards Piperstown to cut around the north-west of the hill, something we had been promising ourselves to do for some time. We found ourselves, in minutes, on a long, straight track going downhill between the trees. I once had a neighbour who professed to have great interest in, and knowledge of nature, and he asked me to take him and his two daughters up Hellfire Hill on a ‘nature walk’. My son David, then six years old, came along as well. As we ascended this track, the neighbours were about five metres in front of us, chattering away animatedly and noisily and taking in very little of the surroundings through which they walked. David, who was very observant and was quick to spot things of interest on walks, nudged me and pointed up ahead. No more than six metres beyond our neighbours, a startlingly red fox had come out from the trees, and as I looked, he paused to look downhill at what was causing the disturbance. After taking in the scene, he moved leisurely across the track and into the trees on the other side; the chattering neighbours, looking everywhere but at this wild wonder, continued uphill unaware.

The secret of successfully observing wild creatures is to freeze as soon as you glimpse the bird or animal in question; stillness and silence will suggest to many creatures that, in spite of their instinctive urge to flee, you might not pose a danger to them. It is also important, on encountering a wild creature, not to look directly at it, but try to watch it out of the corner of your eye: they seem very sensitive to having eyes focussed on them.

I have found that being still can persuade squirrels that you are not a threat; if you come across one, it may escape around the back of the tree to hide out of your sight. Squirrels seem to have no patience, however; within a minute or two it will peer around the tree to see if you are still there, and if you don’t move, it may assume that you are no threat, or you’re gone, and will continue with its business. Stillness usually works, but the sound of a human voice can mean danger for wild animals. Walking with Teresa along the banks of a Donegal river at dawn one time, I came to a halt where a tributary flowing into the river cut off our progress. I stood there, wondering how we might cross. Suddenly, an otter surfaced across the other side of the tributary, a few metres away, water drops like diamonds dripping from its whiskers. It turned its head, and, noticing me, regarded me curiously with big bright eyes. I raised my camera very slowly, and took a couple of shots. The automatic click and wind of the camera sounded deafening to me, but it didn’t disturb the otter. Instead, it swam slowly towards me. I was so excited that I called, without moving, in a stage whisper to Teresa, who was about five metres behind, to come and see. The otter might not have worried about the still shape on the bank, or the mechanical click of the camera, but the sound of the human voice rang loud some instinctive alarm bell, and the beautiful animal immediately disappeared below the surface with hardly a ripple, and we did not see it again.

On the north-west side of Hellfire Hill we saw no birds other than a solitary fieldfare; the recent cold weather has had large flocks of redwings flying over the house in the morning, maybe from their roosts in the Spinney across the field, but up on Hellfire Hill the buffeting wind kept all birds in shelter.

Glendoher, 21 February

I like February. The air is alive with promise, growth is beginning to show itself in all plants and shrubs, and the weather is reaching out towards warmth. Plants that thrive on forest floors, such as wood anemone, lesser celandine and wood sorrel, are soaking up what sunshine filters through the leafless trees;as yet no flowers have appeared, but you can almost hear them coming.

The garden at Glendoher has been mobbed with birds this spring – wrens; siskins; blue, coal, great and frequently long-tailed tits are coming to the feeder, while robins and chaffinches get the crumbs from the bird table, and the quiet dunnock weaves through the cotoneaster at the end of the garden. The dunnock may be quiet, but it is certainly not shy when it comes to mating. We watched a pair the other day, meeting up as they foraged through the garden. What we took to be the female immediately began to act like a chick wanting to be fed, stooping and fluttering her wings, while the male seemed initially a bit nonplussed, and didn’t know what to do. Then he began carefully grooming the female’s tail feathers with his beak. This activity must have reminded him what it was he had to do, and he dutifully hopped on her back. The consummation didn’t last more than a couple of seconds, after which they both flew off in opposite directions.

Dunnocks, I have learned, both male and female, are notorious for having multiple partners. The female accepts partners other than her mate because the more males that think her progeny is theirs, the more assured she will be that her brood won’t go hungry. Males have been known to have two or three female friends, simply because, I suppose, they can. They are very particular about passing on their genes, however: if a male is suspicious that a female he has chosen is ‘playing away’, before copulation he may use his beak to remove any other sperm from her cloaca!

Who loves not Spring’s voluptuous hours,

The carnival of birds and flowers

– James Montgomery, ‘The Reign of Spring’

Our friendly heron is to be seen in the garden across the field almost every morning now – and I have just found out why. The neighbours there are feeding him with, it appears, bread, actually throwing it to him, and he stalks along and takes it up. I don’t think this is such a good idea.

Our little garden pond has provided us with lots of watery fun for many years now. It was created by removing the claw foot legs of an old Edwardian bath tub, and sinking it into the ground. The plughole was blocked up, and the new pond filled with water, enriched by a bucket of muck from a nearby pond and a number of aquatic plants that I brought back from County Clare. Some of these disappeared after a short while, but others have survived to this day. Around the pond we have a little ‘wild’ garden, a small shady place with ferns, montbretia, Solomon’s seal, reeds and St Patrick’s cabbage. It serves as a prep school for young frogs and other creatures before they embark on their travels in the rest of the garden. At the moment adult frogs are splashing about mating in the pond. When tidying it up last week, I was delighted to see a newt come briefly to the surface; it either came in an imported bucket of muck, or was one of a couple I rescued from a damaged pond on Hellfire Hill.

Glendoher, 22 February

There were three squirrels in the garden today at one time. They mostly ignored each other, but today one chased another around the tree a couple of times before the pursued one leapt effortlessly over the wall. One squirrel has taken a fancy to the flowers on our early-flowering camellia; we watched it as it chose a blossom and spent a while plucking petals and eating some of them.

One reason why squirrels are so bold and reckless in leaping through the trees is that if they miss their hold and fall, they sustain no injury. I have seen one fall from a height of five metres into a holly bush and scamper off as if it happens all the time, which it probably does. Every species of tree squirrel seems to be capable of a sort of rudimentary flying, or at least of making itself into a parachute so as to ease or break a fall or a leap from a great height.

Glendoher, 24 February

You don’t have to go to Africa to see elaborate avian courtship behaviour. We have a pair of wood pigeons that have become regulars in the garden, partly to drink from the bird bath that Teresa has put on the shed roof, but also to take advantage of the seeds that are scattered on the grass from a bird feeder. Although they seem to be a permanent pair, the female insists each year on the male going through the usual mating procedure. It is fun to see them hopping, one after the other, doing a fluttering and flapping, leaping and landing dance, and spinning around before returning to the hopping chase. The male goes a long way to try to impress the female: he hops gallantly after her, and then does a series of deep bows, his head to the grass, his tail raised and fanned out. It is particularly amusing to watch when the female, unimpressed, just flies off, leaving the male looking around, puzzled, feeling a little daft, like a fellow refused a dance in a dance hall!

Irish wood pigeons, if they survive fledging, live for five or six years and usually stay in the same area for their lifetime. Today I was delighted to see one launch into the joyful swooping flight that characterises a wood pigeon’s springtime: it flies in a series of dives and climbs, and at the top of the climbs its wings actually clap together with a slapping sound.

Glendoher, 27 February

The beautiful, delicate purple crocuses that appeared in the lawn a couple of weeks ago are almost gone now, but the daffodils are finally bursting forth and spreading their colour and warmth. For the last few days, squirrels have continued to harvest the flowers from one of our camellias. They don’t eat the whole flower, but nibble some of the petals, leaving the top of the wall behind the camellia scattered with rejected petals.

This morning I looked out the window to see a pair of squirrels perching on the wall; as I watched, they started mating. I raced downstairs to get my camera, and was back with the lense out the window before they were finished. It didn’t take long, but afterwards the male was solicitous towards the female, and stayed close for a while, nuzzling her, before she skipped away and down into the garden.

Hellfire Hill, 28 February

The frog-fest has been a big affair this year in our garden, with as many as seven frogs yesterday jockeying for positions in our little pond over a great heap of spawn that stands out of the water. I went up to the pond on Hellfire Hill today to see what was happening there. As the forestry road levelled out near the pond, I spotted a heron circling and alighting in a tree overlooking the water.

frog

When the bird realised someone was coming, like a vertical take-off aircraft, it extended its wings and climbed straight up, defecating two long milky squirts as it took off, and catching the wind, it banked away over the trees. Beautifully sleek and a wonderful shade of dove grey, it looked like a young bird.

The noise from the pond was startlingly loud, a chorus of ‘ribbits’ that sounded like a motorbike revving up a few hundred yards away. As I approached the pond, I was met with numbers of frogs apparently leaving, some males getting a piggyback ride from a female. The pond itself was alive with the creatures swimming amidst islands of spawn, the topmost globules glinting with frost in the sunlight. Many of the frogs were in great tangled lumps, slowly tumbling in the water as other wide-eyed, lust-driven males climbed aboard. I always find it an astonishing scene, no matter how often I see it. There is the deadly serious side, this vision of a delicate and vulnerable creature in a frenzy to ensure it reproduces itself, wide-eyed frenetic coupling, the male gripping the female around the throat, the latecomers grabbing on in any way they can. This mating clinch is known as amplexus, and can continue for as long as two days. It may be a fertility festival, but it has its downside; the remains of unfortunate females who haven’t survived the rough and tumble are often found at the pond edge, having drowned in the act. Male frogs who haven’t managed to find a female have been known to chase fish with amorous intent! One cannot help but be amused on arriving at the pond, however, at the innocent, expressionless gaze of the smaller male frogs caught clinging to a female’s back or legs, crouching down and pretending not to be there.

As I watched, a raven arrived with feathers all spikey; it seemed that he had designs on the occupants of the pond, but as he tried to land, he was disconcerted by a gust of wind, and, seeing me, decided to go elsewhere.

Further on along the forestry track, wood pigeons were congregating in the trees in considerable numbers, and trumpeting their characteristic ‘coo- cooooo, cu-coo’ call, always reminiscent of early mornings in my childhood home in Waterford. As I walked on through the trees, the air was filled with the explosive whirring and slapping sound of the big birds bursting from their roosts above me. There certainly are a lot of them about this year; in addition to the pair that have made our garden their home, about two dozen at least are constantly hurtling to and fro around the trees in Glendoher.