An Irish Nature Year

17th

God in His wisdom made the fly

And then forgot to tell us why.

When Ogden Nash wrote that pithy little poem in 1942, he didn’t understand the immense importance of flies and the epic work that they do. Perhaps he didn’t know this:

Without them we’d be knee-deep in corpses and faeces

And surely the earth would be falling to pieces.

Flies and their larvae – maggots – are responsible for marvellous feats of waste processing. They are among the many invertebrates that industriously recycle dead or discarded matter into soil nutrients. The role of flies in this world is crucial: without them, our planet would cease functioning. Flies are food for all manner of predators: other invertebrates and birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and mammals. They are important pollinators: some plants, including chocolate and rare orchids, are pollinated only by members of this under-appreciated order. Hoverflies, with their pretty striped or furry suits, are probably the best-loved of all Diptera (from the Greek for two-winged). There are 160,000 known fly species in the world (and thousands unknown). They include everything from tiny midges to great, gangly craneflies.

18th Despite its name, the grey wagtail is more yellow than grey. While the wings and back are slate-grey, it is the lemon-toned rump and undercarriage that calls attention to the bird, especially when set aglow by the low January sun. This elegant relative of the pied wagtail favours fast-flowing water and wild places, and is rarely seen in gardens. Colder weather, however, drives it to more sheltered areas, so those of us with tiny ponds can sometimes be surprised by its presence in winter. These garden visitors may be Irish birds or migrants from northern Europe. The grey wagtail is lovely to watch, bouncing in one place as if on springs, while its long tail dips up and down exaggeratedly. In Ireland, it is often known as the yellow wagtail. This is confusing, as the true yellow wagtail is another bird, a rarely seen passage migrant that winters in southern Spain and sub-Saharan Africa.

19th Sometimes, when you are on a beach, you spot a seal out in the sea – just a chimney-cowl of a head, dark against the water. If it is close enough, the black, liquid eyes are visible. Seals are inquisitive and often swim parallel to walkers, especially if there are dogs in tow. We have two native seals: the grey seal and the harbour or common seal. The ‘common’ is misleading: its population is 4,500 to 5,500 individuals while that of the grey seal is 7,000 to 9,000. Harbour seals are smaller animals, but the two species can be difficult to differentiate when in the water. Harbour seals have a v-shaped nostril configuration and more dog-like heads with a rounded forehead and a dip down to the nose. Grey seals have a smoothly sloped, egg-shaped head, with the look of a more dignified, Roman nose. There is much Irish mythology about seals. Some stories say that they are the souls of dead fishermen, while others say that they are people who were unable to get onto Noah’s Ark.

20th Hooded crows are often at the seashore, especially in winter, when there are fewer insects about for them to feed on. When the tide is out, they hunt among seaweedy rocks in the intertidal area – a rich hunting ground revealed when the water retreats. There, they find shellfish such as periwinkles, mussels and cockles. Hoodies or grey crows (feannóg and caróg liath in Irish) are known for dropping the shells onto hard surfaces to shatter them so they can get at the insides. Researchers studying the activities of thirty-four hooded crows in Cork Harbour discovered that the average height from which adults dropped mussels was 4.8 metres. From around this height, the shells broke and the flesh was easily retrieved. Any higher and more energy would be expended, the contents would spread farther and the bird would spend longer retrieving it, possibly risking plundering from other crows. Juveniles were more hit-and-miss and often chose softer (less effective) surfaces, either through inexperience or because they were excluded from the better dropping zones. Crows hide shellfish for later consumption so that they have food for the times when their foraging places are covered by water.

21st Now, and over the next month, baby badgers are being born. The cubs are tiny, blind and helpless and will stay underground for around twelve weeks. Although a badger’s pregnancy is short – around seven weeks – mating most likely took place many months ago, possibly last spring. Badgers are able to delay implantation into the uterus of the blastocyte, the pre-embryonic stage, until December. This means that when the cubs leave the sett in spring, the world is waking up, and it is a good time for finding food. They are partial to earthworms, but have a diverse diet, including the larvae of insects (bees, wasps, moths and craneflies) as well as slugs, frogs and vegetable matter. There are many old stories about badgers: one piece of fanciful folklore from County Sligo says ‘there are two kinds of badger, the pig badger and the dog badger. The pig badger is big and wild looking. He would attack a person, but the dog badger is not so wild.’ There are other tales of badgers throwing stones at humans, and even eating them.i In fact, badgers are more likely to scarper upon seeing a human.

22nd On mild winter days, the song thrush sings at dawn and dusk. His is a virtuoso performance: cascading coloratura trills and plaintive keening, interspersed with an outpouring of pips, chirrups and twitters. In the words of Robert Burns, ‘aged Winter, ’mid his surly reign, / At thy blythe carol clears his furrowed brow’. The songsters are males establishing breeding territories. Each bird may have a repertoire of a hundred different phrases, often repeating one several times before moving on to the next. They leave short gaps during their renditions in order to listen for competition. The song thrush is a farmland and edge-of-woodland species, and its habitat is threatened by land drainage and tillage farming. It makes its nest in hedgerows and shrubs, and is equally happy in mature parks and gardens. In times past, thrushes were considered a friend to farmers and gardeners. An old verse, recorded in Donegal in the 1930s goes:

Don’t kill the thrush, boys.

Don’t rob its nest.

For of all the Irish warbles,

The brown bird is the best.

23rd Lesser celandine, a wild plant of woodland, hedgerows and gardens, is in bloom. It is a ‘spring ephemeral’, producing flowers and leaves only in the early part of the year. By summer these have died back, and the plant has vanished from sight. It maintains its presence underground in tuber form. The ‘petals’ on the buttercup-like flowers are not real petals, but are modified sepals, known as tepals. Their extreme glossiness, which is unusual among flowers, serves two distinct purposes. It sends a signal to distant pollinators by bouncing the sun’s light, like the flash from a mirror. It also reflects heat onto the stamens and carpels (the reproductive structures) which helps pollen and seed to ripen – while also providing a warm spot for the pollinator. Lesser celandine was known colloquially as pilewort because the tubers were thought to resemble haemorrhoids. In folk medicine, the plant was used to cure that affliction, as well as pimples, ringworm and rottenness of the teeth and gums.

24th Bird lovers delight in seeing bullfinch families visiting feeders in winter. The males have jet black caps and portly bellies the crimson tone of an unwise holiday sunburn. The females are more demure, their black hats offset by muted, cappuccino-coloured breasts. Orchard owners are less enamoured of these stocky birds. When other food is scarce they systematically strip the buds from fruit trees, starting at the tips of branches and working inwards. Bullfinches can live for over twelve years, and recent research has strongly suggested that pairs stay together for multiple seasons – an assumption that has been made, but not proved, in the past. Olav Hogstad, an emeritus professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, watched bullfinches for twenty-four years. He banded a total of 165 birds and found signs that pairs stay together through several winters, and therefore probably through several mating seasons. Long-term bonding such as this allows pairs to nest earlier in the year: they don’t need to go through the annual hoopla of finding a mate.

25th Snowdrops are in flower. They are not part of our native flora, but they have naturalised and spread at a genteel rate in old estates, woodlands and churchyards. Most records are from Northern Ireland and counties Wexford, Waterford and Cork. The little white flowers – ‘February’s fair maids’ – were traditionally associated with Candlemas Day, 2 February, and were a sign of purity and hope. They are flowering progressively earlier, however, and are now part of January’s floral palette. The flowers open only on mild days, when pollinators are present to collect the nectar and the distinctive orange pollen. The eighteenth-century English poet Thomas Tickell, who lived in Dublin (in Glasnevin, on the property that later became the Botanic Gardens), dubbed the flowers ‘vegetable snow’ in his poem, ‘Kensington Gardens’. In times past, snowdrops were sometimes planted to outline the way to the privy, which must have made a dark and chilly journey more bearable. During the Crimean war, officers sent bulbs home to Ireland of the local snowdrop (Galanthus plicatus), which then became the parent of various cultivated snowdrops. Some soldiers also planted them in ‘gardens’ around their tents. One, writing to his mother from the cavalry camp at Kadikoi, mentions that Lord Raglan, ‘on seeing some flowers around a hut said, yes it was very well, but he should have had cabbages instead’.

26th Take a walk along any rocky shoreline and you’ll see birds foraging among the seaweed-encrusted rocks. There is usually a heron fishing, while turnstone, herring gull and redshank rummage around, looking for molluscs and crustaceans among the strands of wrack. Oystercatchers, more often seen en masse on mudflats and sandy beaches, also frequent the rocky water’s edge, stepping gingerly and inelegantly. Their awkwardly-toed feet seem ill-equipped for the uneven surface. An old Irish tale says that the oystercatcher lent its webbed feet to a gull, which never returned them. It seems also that it may have lent out its bill and received a cartoonish, bright orange carrot in return. Its beady, garnet eye and yin-yang, black-and-white plumage add to its comical looks. When it takes flight, however, with a ‘pu-peep … peep!’, it is a dazzling, dynamic creature: all angular wings and vivid feather patterns.

27th In milder parts of the country, primroses are already popping out their pale flowers. Although they are the quintessential spring flowers of poets and romantics, they can be found in bloom any time from January into June. They provide valuable early nectar for a host of long-tongued insects, including bumblebees and bee-flies and the occasional butterfly emerging from hibernation. The primrose is also the larval food plant for at least four moths: silver-ground carpet, broad-bordered yellow underwing, double square-spot and green arches. Slugs and snails nibble its petals, while the foreign invader from southern Europe, the black vine weevil, will happily mash through the fleshy roots of garden populations. There is much traditional lore associated with the little yellow-flowered plants. They were used to cure a multitude of ailments, among them burns, cuts, piles, jaundice, tuberculosis, toothache and insomnia. In the farmyard, primroses were supposed to be efficacious in treating horse coughs and the sores on cows’ udders.

28th The ‘blue tit tweetles from the patio’ now – to borrow an image from the Northern Irish poet, Michael Longley. The dapper male in his neat, blue-capped, bell-boy outfit sings brief melodies with a piccolo-like shrillness: high trills dropping quickly to lower notes. The female, who is nearby, is in similar plumage, but her blue hat, wings and tail are a little duller. Although blue tits raise only one brood during the year, they pair early and will begin to inspect nesting places soon. If you plan on putting up nest boxes (which they use readily), there is no time to be lost. Choose north- or northeast-facing walls or trees, two to four metres from the ground. Between seven and eleven eggs are laid and are timed to hatch during caterpillar season, from late April onwards. Both parents feed the nestlings. Blue tits can be long-lived: eleven years is the longest known lifespan. The greatest mortalities happen during the first season, with sparrowhawks and cats as the top predators.

29th Although February is frogspawn month for much of Ireland, January also sees a few precocious frogs engaged in the rigours of amplexus in sheltered ponds. Some may even breed in late December. When a female enters a pond, she is grabbed by a male (or two or three). Occasionally, if there are too many males, she may drown. As she releases her eggs, the male sheds sperm, fertilising them immediately. Each egg is enclosed in a capsule which swells in the water to form the familiar gelatinous globules. The jelly both protects and feeds the developing tadpoles, which take from ten to twenty-one days to hatch, depending on the weather. Often the first sign that frogs are about is the croaking of the males, a beckoning call to the females. ‘Croaking’ is an unfair description, as the sound is deep, resonant and regular: like a large woodpecker drumming on a hollow bamboo tube.

30th Walk along any relatively wild coastal stretch and you may see a robin-sized bird with black head, white half-collar and warm, russet waistcoat. It will be perched prominently on a fence post or shrub, and may allow you to get quite close before flitting off to another, slightly farther resting place. This is the stonechat, so named because its alarm call sounds like two smooth stones clacking together. The females are similar to the males (described above), but the colours are less contrasting, more washed out. During winter, birds on the coast are joined by those from bogs, heaths and rough slopes on higher ground. The oldest known Saxicola rubicola was found dead in Germany, having been ringed eight years and ten months previously. The species has several names in Irish. Among the most appealing are Donncha an chaipín (Donncha with the cap) and Máirín an triúis (Mary with the trousers) for the different sexes.

31st Today is the eve of Saint Brigid’s Day or Lá Fhéile Bhríde, the feast of Ireland’s female patron saint, a personage who morphed from pagan goddess to Christian divinity. Today (or tomorrow, at a pinch) is the time to gather rushes to make the characteristic Saint Brigid’s cross, an emblem that may carry a legacy of solar symbolism. The crosses are made of sixteen pieces of soft rush (or geataire in Irish), and are believed to keep a home safe from misfortune. Juncus effusus is a common and familiar plant of marshes, roadsides, ditches, water edges and poorly drained pasture. In the mid-nineteenth century, David Bishop, curator of Belfast Botanic Gardens, discovered a peculiar, curling form of soft rush, spiralis, in Connemara. It is now sometimes grown as a curiosity by gardeners. Robert Lloyd Praeger, the Irish naturalist, later noted that the same form grew on various Atlantic islands off the west coast. The corkscrew rush has also been recorded in the Orkney Islands and the west of Scotland and Wales.

1st Today, according to some calendars, is the first day of spring. In Ireland, with our changeable weather, the season’s start is a moveable feast. This month often brings snow. Equally, it may also bring warm sunshine – and everything else in between. In the past, the movements of hedgehogs were thought to predict the weather. Folklore collected in County Longford states: ‘When the hedgehog comes out of his “nest” and sees his shadow on the 1st February, he goes back again for six weeks, because there’s hard weather coming.’ In fact, hedgehogs may wake on milder days and ramble around a bit, especially at the start or end of winter. In Donegal, the weather forecaster is a badger: if he appears on Candlemas Day (tomorrow) and sees his shadow, there will be bad weather for three months. In America, tomorrow is Groundhog Day, when the meteorological outlook depends on the prognosticating prowess of a groundhog, known also as a woodchuck.

2nd Shepherd’s purse is in bloom now: it barely stops flowering all year. It is a wild plant of waste places and field margins. Its small, heart-shaped seed pods, which are delicately displayed on ankle-high stems, are more noticeable than the four-petalled, tiny, white flowers. It is the pods that give the plant its name, as they resemble the pouches worn by mediaeval peasants. When they split, minuscule golden seeds pour out, like Lilliputian coins. The seeds exude a glue when they become moist, and adhere to the feet of passing birds or animals, which then help to disperse them. In the doctrine of signatures, the pods were thought to resemble bladders and were used to treat urinary infections. Capsella bursa-pastoris belongs to the cabbage family (Brassicaceae) and is edible. If grown in fertile soil, the first leaves can be used as a baby-leaf salad, and the pods added to dishes for a peppery flavour. The garden carpet moth lays its eggs on shepherd’s purse.

3rd This time of the year often sees unusual migrants arriving in Ireland. One such species is the glossy ibis, a dark and fantastical-looking, gothicky bird with stilts for legs and a sickle-shaped bill. At a distance the plumage is rook-black, but closer up, hints of iridescence become apparent. During the breeding season, these wading birds are a low-key maroon with shining wing coverts that show green, purple and amber highlights. The species originated in Africa, but since the nineteenth century its range has expanded to the Americas and Europe. The glossy ibis is a pioneer species, where some individuals are impelled to wander long distances prospecting for suitable new territories to colonise. Birds that turned up in County Wexford a few years ago had been ringed in Coto Doñana National Park in southern Spain. A pair nested and attempted to breed in Lincolnshire in 2014, but were unsuccessful. However, as our climate changes, it is probably only a matter of time before they establish here. You can check sightings of glossy ibis and other rare birds at irishbirding.com

4th Hazel catkins are swinging from twigs now, like the fingers of limp, mustard-yellow gloves. These are the male flowers, laden with masses of lightweight pollen which is then wafted by the breeze onto the tiny red-tasselled female flowers. Compared to insect carriers, which perform a door-to-door service, wind dispersal is an inefficient mechanism for moving pollen. Relatively huge amounts are released, with only a small portion finding its way to the female flowers. Hay fever sufferers may be affected by the tiny, airborne grains now. Bees collect hazel pollen for food, but they appear not to assist in fertilising the female flowers. These contain no nectar, so are of limited interest. In the Brehon Laws’ hierarchy of trees, hazel was classified as a ‘noble of the wood’.ii The trees were very valuable, both for their nuts and for their timber, which was used for furniture and fencing.

5th The ‘household bird, with the red stomacher’ as poet John Donne called the robin, is normally fiercely territorial outside the breeding season. Both males and females defend separate domains, singing and – if necessary – fighting to maintain their patches. However, during very harsh weather hostilities may be dropped in gardens where food is in plentiful supply. In late winter, females begin to prospect for partners, gingerly entering a male’s zone. Cordial relations are gradually established, and for a few months birds will form harmonious pairs in order to breed and raise chicks. Nest building will commence in the coming weeks – an operation carried out entirely by the female. While she constructs the cup-shaped nest of dead leaves, moss, roots and hair, her mate feeds her, providing about a third of her daily intake. As she incubates the four to six eggs, he continues to bring her food. After about two weeks, the chicks hatch, and both parents feed them.

6th Keep your eyes on the ground, and sooner or later you’ll see groundsel. The opportunistic little plant seeds into crevices in paving, along roadsides and in disturbed ground. It is immune to frost, and can be found in bloom any month of the year. It is not a thing of beauty, with its near-invisible, lemon-tipped, cylindrical flower heads and ragged leaves. Senecio vulgaris is closely related to the ragworts; the genus name comes from the Latin for old man, senex, which refers to the whiskery, white parachutes on the seeds. Grúnlas (in Irish) was frequently recommended as a folk remedy for many ailments, including jaundice, eczema, warts and distemper. In a poultice it was supposed to draw the corruption from a boil. Today, it is still fed to caged budgerigars and canaries. It is the food plant for various moth caterpillars; it also provides a home for aphids. These, in turn, become food for other invertebrates and for small birds. Groundsel is an annual plant: germinating, growing and setting seed in the space of a year.

7th If you live in a suburban or greenish urban area, take a look at the surrounding chimneys and before too long you’re bound to see a jackdaw. Often there is a pair. Members of the species mate for life and maintain the bond throughout the year. The jackdaw is the smallest of the dark crows and is easily recognised if you can get close enough. While much of the plumage is charcoal, the forehead and chin is jet black, as if the bird had dipped its face in a pot of ink. The eyes are disconcertingly pale and staring – like those of a goat. Jackdaws are cavity nesters, and researchers have posited that the white irises act as signals to fellow colony members that a particular niche is occupied. They remain faithful to the same nest year after year. This might be in a tree crevice, a cliff cranny, a fissure in a ruin, or even a rabbit hole. Occasionally you may see a bird with irregular white or pale splotches on its plumage. This is leucism, a condition where pigment is absent or diluted in some of the feathers. It is not uncommon in jackdaws.

8th There is a confusion of yellow dandelion-like flowers all year round. This month’s special is coltsfoot, which sends up single flowers several weeks before the leaves. The vernacular name ‘son-before-father’ recognises this characteristic. The ray florets are finer and more lemony than those of dandelion. The stout, scale-covered flower stalks look touched with grey cobwebs, as do the large roundish leaves. These give the plant its name: they are supposed to resemble the hooves of a colt. The underside is coated with a fine, pale felt. In times past, this downy material was collected and used as tinder. Caleb Threlkeld, in his 1727 Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum, the first Irish flora, recommended boiling it in ‘a Lixivium with a little salt-nitre’ (lye and saltpetre) for the ‘best Tinder’. The botanical name, Tussilago farfara, comes from the Latin tussis, a cough. The leaves were used as a cure for coughs, sometimes – not very helpfully – in tobacco form. Coltsfoot is still used in some herbal remedies.

9th Pied wagtails have roosted at night in Dublin’s O’Connell Street for over ninety years. Robert Lloyd Praeger, in his classic book, The Way that I Went (1937), writes that they were first seen in the winter of 1929, in a tree ‘that rose between sets of tramway rails, among bright arc lights, at a place where traffic is heavy and continuous’. Until the street’s refurbishment at the beginning of this century, hundreds of birds (with a maximum of 3,600 in 1950) roosted in the plane trees from mid-October until mid-April. They still spend cold nights on O’Connell Street, but in much-diminished numbers. A newer roost has appeared outside the library on Dún Laoghaire’s seafront. On the south west edge (opposite the upper entrance) is a large D-shaped water feature with a sunken bed of bamboos in the middle. A hundred or more wagtails roost in the greenery here, and for the next few weeks can be seen arriving at sunset. They gather on the roof of the library and drop down to the bamboos in twos and threes, like falling leaves.