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 of our best-known insects, most go unnoticed by people generally. Here in Ireland, we have ninety- eight species of bee, and one-third of these are facing extinction. Our bumblebee population has declined by 15 per cent in the last five years alone, and we rely heavily on the bumblebee for pollination. This means that, if nothing changes, and we apply the same figure for every five years into the future, within forty years the bumblebee population will be less than a third of what it is today. In a global warming context, however, this situation is likely to be accelerated. These problems are being caused by the way we live today, and we need to wake up and deal with them.
Glendoher, 7 March
The birds are in full mating mode now, and I find that, if I have patience, watching their activities in the garden reveals a lot about their particular displays. The experts say that while all cock robins sing, only about half of hen robins do so, and their song is indistinguishable from that of the cock. Why only half of them sing is a mystery to me, but this is the case; those hens that do sing usually cease when they pair with a cock.
At breakfast one March morning, I noticed a strange-looking bird in a birch in the garden. It resembled a robin with a large black spot in the centre of his breast, and held his head at a peculiar angle. When I got out the binoculars it became clearer. It was indeed a robin, which I presumed to be a male, and it was going through a courting display for another robin on a nearby branch. He had his head arched back so that the beak was pointing towards the sky, which made him look almost headless from where I stood. The stretch on the skin of his breast was such, however, that there was a large gap in his red plumage, which appeared like a black patch. As he perched in this stance, he swayed back and forth slowly, seeming to hypnotise the female, who watched him intently and curiously, head to one side. This went on for about five minutes, the male moving closer to the female twice, before they both flew off, buzzing around each other.
The cock robin draws the attention of local hens to his presence by his song, and it is after this, and sometimes weeks later, with the hen’s interest aroused and with the nest completed, that the courting display take place. It is followed by coition, which is infrequent and without
