A Natural Year
BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
Walking Guides
The Wicklow Way
Ireland’s Long Distance Walks
Ireland’s Waymarked Trails
Irish Waterside Walks
Ordnance Survey guide to the Wicklow Way
Ordnance Survey guide to the Western Way
Ordnance Survey guide to the Beara
Way Waterford Walks
Guides
Day Tours from Dublin
Travelogues
By Cliff and Shore
By Swerve of Shore
Walking Across Ireland
Rambling Down the Suir
Michael Fewer’s Ireland
Anthology
A Walk in Ireland
Biography
Thomas Joseph Byrne: Nation Builder
Architectural History
The New Neighbourhood of Dublin
(with Dr Maurice Craig & Joseph Hone)
Doorways of Ireland
History
The Wicklow Military Road: History and Topography
Hellfire Hill: A Human and Natural History
The Battle of the Four Courts
Children
Naturama: Open Your Eyes to the Wonders of Irish Nature
My Naturama Nature Journal
A Natural Year
The Tranquil
Rhythms and
Restorative Powers
of Irish Nature
Through the
a Seasons
MICHAEL FEWER
First published in 2020 by
Merrion Press
10 George’s Street
Newbridge
Co. Kildare
Ireland
Illustrations and photographs by Michael Fewer
© Michael Fewer, 2020
9781785373183 (Paper)
9781785373190 (Kindle)
9781785373206 (Epub)
9781785373213 (PDF)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and theabove publisher of this book.
Cover design and typesetting by River Design
Front and back cover images: © Michael Fewer and Shutterstock
For my grandson, James Michael Fewer
Acknowledgements
This little book would not have come into being
without the support and inspiration of my wife,
Teresa, the advice of Jonathan Williams, and the
enthusiasm of Conor Graham and his colleagues at Merrion Press.
CONTENTS
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Index
FOREWORD
It was in the late 1980s on the Aran Islands, when taking trainee primary-school teachers – who were there to brush up their Irish – on nature walks, that it dawned on me that this particular sort of thing was quite a useless exercise in many ways. How could these students from the east of Ireland feel any
