A Natural Year. Michael Fewer
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.
March
Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
– Robert Browning, ‘A Lovers’ Quarrel’
primroses
MARCH COMES IN WITH THE WELCOME appearance in the garden of the little brown-tailed bumblebee, buzzing around seeking out early nectar plants. We have twenty species of bumblebee in Ireland, but I find it difficult to identify more than a half dozen. They are by far our most efficient wild pollinator, and our most numerous and perhaps our most loved insect. I say most loved, because their slow, lazy humming buzz is the sound of summer, and their colourful, furry bodies are a pleasure to behold as they lumber from flower to flower, sometimes with a heavy dusting of nectar. Bumblebees are under threat, however: their habitats, in the countryside and in suburban gardens, are being seriously eroded by the expansion of nitrogen-rich grasslands and ribbon development, by the increased popularity of hard surfaces and decks in gardens, and by the proliferation of flower- less lawns. The dandelion is an early, rich source of nectar for the bumblebee, but it is also one of the most hated ‘weeds’ in a garden, and rarely tolerated. We cannot do without bees, and particularly bumblebees: the only hard economic figures I have to indicate the importance of these insects are from 2008, when bee pollination generated €14.4 million of the horticultural produce in Ireland, in addition to honey sales of €992,000.
I don’t believe that the population in general has realised that a global crisis is looming due to the continuing rate of extinction of our insect population. We simply cannot do without them because of their essential part in the production of the food we eat. Although the bee is perhaps one