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Wild about nature
By MALCOLM ROGERS
 Malcolm Rogers reviews a new book Complete Irish Wildlife and considers the best places in Ireland to view nature’s bounty.
Wildlife programmes are just about the most untruthful programmes on television. For half an hour some of the most exciting images in nature are paraded before your eyes — birds of prey swooping down on their kill, red deer rutting their stuff, seal pups being nurtured by their mothers. The television camera has accustomed us to expect a continuous and unimpeded view of events.
In nature documentaries when a polar bear follows a seal into the ice, the camera goes down too. When a snake digests a rat whole, the camera is there too. Eventually the viewer is left with the impression that any visit to the country will provide endless vignettes of intimate animal behaviour, any walk through the countryside will afford continuous close-ups of nature’s splendours — just like you see on the telly.
But of course it isn’t like that. Walk for half a dozen miles in the mountains and you’ll be lucky to see a rabbit; troll along miles of sea-shore and you might just catch a glimpse of a seal a few hundred yards out to sea. Myself, I’d ban all misleading ‘wildlife’ programmes — and I use those quotation marks advisedly. Because, a large proportion of wildlife films are either animals in captivity, or animals under very intense 24/7 monitoring processes.
Radio programmes are a different kettle of cuttlefish entirely. The picture, as they say, is always clearer on the radio, and with wildlife this is particularly true. Because the subject matter has to be dealt with verbally it soon emerges that there’s a lot more to nature than the cuddly images you see on television. One of the most popular programmes on RTÉ is Derek Mooney’s wildlife programme Mooney Goes Wild, and here the message is clear. With care, patience, time and knowledge it is possible to see most of Ireland’s mammals, birds, fish and butterflies, but to do so you need to have some knowledge of animal and habitat. Form this ethos a true interest in nature begins to develop, far removed from fluffy images as purveyed by the majority of television’s nature programmes.
From earthworms to bookworms
Books are an even better guide to wildlife than a radio programme. Here as much import is given to the likes of the lesser marsh grasshopper as to the red deer. Which is as it should be, for to quote Edward Abbey, naturalist and author: “What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.” In other words, everything in nature is connected, and to have any chance of observing nature ’red tooth and claw’, you must have some idea of how the food chain works. There is no free lunch in an ecosystem and the Complete Irish Wildlife is true to that central fact. The lowliest sea shore invertebrate is included, as well as the second largest living animal in the world, the finback whale, which can regularly be seen off the west coast of Ireland.
Complete Irish Wildlife, written by Derek Mooney and Paul Sterry, describes almost all the mammals, birds, fish and butterflies of Ireland, as well as the flowers, trees and shrubs which you’ll encounter in any walk in the country. Now, most of these you could also come across in Britain, but Ireland does have a few species which are unique, such as the Irish hare and the Irish jay, as well as a few places such as the Burren which boasts both Arctic and Mediterranean flowers.
Talking big bucks
So if you wanted to see Ireland’s largest land mammal, the red deer, where would you go? Well, my Complete Irish Wildlife tells me that this is Ireland’s only native deer, and the best place to see it is the Killarney National Park.
Killarney’s red deer herd is particularly ancient, and unlike most herds elsewhere in Ireland, is probably pure Irish, having no introduced specimens.
Of course, that’s not the only reason for visiting this neck of the woods. Because it just so happens that the woods of which this is the neck is a unique ancient oak forest, with an under storey of yew. Once upon a time large swathes of Ireland were covered by this type of landscape. However, a combination of climate change and woodland clearance for agriculture over the past 5,000 years meant that the great woodlands went into gradual decline. The Killarney oakwood forest is one of the best places to visit if you want to see Ireland how she used to be. The woods abound with wildlife, both animals and flowers. The humidity of the Killarney area also gives rise to a spectacular display of mosses and ferns. Rightly do they say round these parts that if you planted a walking stick it would grow. The oakwoods are open to the public and there are several walking tracks running throughout the area.
Bully for them
You don’t have to travel too far from Dublin Airport to reach one wildlife area highly recommended by the Wildlife book. Bull Island, just 4 miles from the centre of Dublin, is an internationally important nature reserve. Each winter, its mud flats and salt marshes play host to some of the largest concentrations of wildfowl and wading birds in the country.
Bull Island is connected to the rest of Ireland by a wooden bridge and a more recently constructed causeway. Its location as a UNESCO Biosphere reserve within a capital city is unique. For the birdwatcher the most interesting areas are the tidal flats and salt marsh between the island and the mainland. It hosts internationally important numbers of Brent geese which can often be found grazing on the grass alongside the coast road. In recent years they have spread to parklands and football fields back in from the coast. The mud flats and marshland teem with dunlin, oystercatcher, redshank, curlew, black-tailed godwit and snipe. The full species list is in the region of 200.
Slope off to the Slobs
The Wexford Wildfowl Reserve is situated on the Wexford Slobs. This is Ireland’s premier wildfowl reserve — and you won’t even need your binoculars to see the birds. Half of the entire world population of Greenland white-fronted geese stop off here to dine during the months of September and March, and its pretty hard to miss them. In addition, there are huge numbers of waders and swans. This is a truly magnificent wildlife spot, where you can watch some of the world’s great travellers as they journey from the New World to the Old. Remember — the birds knew the world was round before we did.
It’s fine in Hyne
Lough Hyne in Co. Cork is a geographical freak — it’s a sea lake. Better than that, according to some experts Lough Hyne is Europe’s only true inland marine lake: a glacier-gouged lagoon joined to the sea by a narrow umbilical channel. But perhaps even more striking is that this is quite simply one of the most beautiful loughs in the world.
Nestling in a fold of hills, it’s less than half a dozen miles south west of Skibbereen in west Cork, Lough Hyne is fed from the sea by a narrow tidal channel known as The Rapids.
Because the temperature of the water in the lake is higher than that of the surrounding sea - and considerably higher than a freshwater lough at this latitude would be - this unique place is home to a rich and varied range of plants and animals, including many rare and beautiful species. Some of the seaweed would normally be more at home in the Mediterranean. Despite numerous studies, scientists have still to unearth the mystery why the lough is always some 3 degrees C warmer than the sea.
Keep your eyes open
The above sites are the spectaculars of wildlife in Ireland, as mentioned in Complete Irish Wildlife. But in reality the country has a variety of different habitats — and although not as wooded as most parts of Europe, Ireland can boast one almost unique feature that can almost be considered a nature reserve in its own right — the hedgerows. Now missing from most of the rest of Europe (except parts of Britain) the hedgerow is home to hundreds of species of insects, birds — and the odd mammal. Remember, however, to see anything will require patience and vigilance, but the rewards are incalculable. Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous. Leonardo da Vinci said that, and although he never visited Ireland (to the best of my knowledge), he knew a thing or two about beauty.
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