particularly enthused about their brilliant yellow-striped tails and their crests.
I had to go into Dublin city this morning, and I walked almost a mile along the Owendoher River to reach the bus stop at Rathfarnham. Up until the end of the nineteenth century the waters of this fast-flowing mountain stream were harnessed to run many mills in the area. There was a paper mill and a linen mill at nearby Edmondstown, a mile or so south of Glendoher, and the same water that powered them continued northwards to serve another two paper mills at Newbrook and Bolton Hall, and a woollen cloth mill at Millbrook, which occupied a site just across the field from our back garden. Today, however, water mills only exist in place names, and like many small rivers, the Owendoher is ignored, which has allowed it to become a secret wilderness corridor that, shrouded with foliage, slices through the concrete and tarmac and noise of suburbia. For most of the stretch that I walked to Rathfarnham, the surface of the water was three or four metres below the pavement, curtained off from it by an old stone wall and a thick cordon of ivy-clothed trees and shrubs. Along the way, however, there are places where the wall is low, and in wintertime, with no leaves on the trees, those who are interested are afforded a view into the watery oasis. The river is lined with ash, sycamore, chestnut, oak and conifer trees, unmanaged by man, some dead and hollow, and others leaning over and trailing liana-like creepers in the rushing waters.
Today I saw that the chestnut trees are already sporting their big, sticky buds, and I noticed a couple of escapee apple trees opening delicate green and pink blossoms. Ivy is rampant along this wild corridor, where it reigns unmolested. Although hated by gardeners, it is a most valuable natural resource, providing secluded nesting locations and food for many bird species as well as habitats and late nectar for myriads of insects. It is neither parasitic nor invasive, and it takes its nourishment from its own roots, clinging to rather than penetrating the bark of trees it uses to climb to the sun. Sometimes, however, if it is not controlled, it can so weigh down elderly trees that they are vulnerable to being up-rooted by winter storms.
In places the short stretches of riverbank were covered with the pale green disks of butterbur and escapee flowers from gardens, and buddleia bushes and fuchsia, which we can expect to bloom as the year goes on, were plentiful. The birdsong along the river this morning was continuous, with chaffinches and wrens leading the chorus. Some years ago I recommended to the local authority that they build a pedestrian boardwalk along the river to allow people to access this wonderland. A small section was indeed built, but then they ran out of money and the work has not proceeded. I, for one, am glad.
Our garden at Glendoher is never without the robin’s tinkling song, and the redbreast seems so much more tame at this time of year. The naturalist Richard Jefferies, in his final essay before his death in 1887, could have been talking about the robin when he wrote that ‘the bird upon the tree utters the meaning of the wind – a voice of the grass and wild flower, words of the green leaf; they speak through the slender tone. Sweetness of dew, and rifts of sunshine, the dark hawthorn touched by breaths of open bud, the odour of the air, the colour of the daffodil – all that is delicious and beloved of spring- time are expressed in his song.’
It is strange that what sounds serene and beautiful to us is really, to a rival male bird, a forceful diatribe of threats, boasts and warnings. Birdsong is a multi- functional operation; it is used to attract mates, intimidate enemies, stimulate an urge to build nests and, of course, certain call notes, like the harsh click-click-click of the wren in the nearby bush, are specifically to warn of danger. The experts tell us that birdsong is controlled by the sex hormones, and is an invaluable tool in the setting up and maintaining of a territory. Singing, for a bird, actually takes the place of fighting – what a marvellous concept! When two rival birds with adjoining territories are proclaiming their supremacy, it somehow seems to be a rule that they don’t sing together. When ‘our’ wren comes to the end of his vehement scolding song he pauses and, sure enough, his nearby rival wren, perhaps fifty metres away across the field, gets his turn to shout back!
However long the winter might seem to us today, imagine how it must have been in early times, a deeply anxious time and a matter of life and death. Family or communal stocks of food, carefully preserved and stored since the previous autumn, would have dwindled week by week, and people would daily be watching for the signs that growth would soon begin again. Some organised and long- established communities had the advantages of knowledgeable priests and great astrometric megaliths to help foresee the winter solstice, but for most, it was only the barely discernible changes in the landscape around them that might herald the return of the time of plenitude and the knowledge that they would not starve. In Ireland there were no pristine crocus petals or gleaming, drooping snowdrops to signal the approach of warmer weather, because these plants were imported from Europe much later. Spring-bringers such as the delicate white blossoms of wood anemones on sheltered woodland floors would be watched for, and, near watercourses, alders would be examined to see if their purple catkins were unfolding. The first show of the mist of tiny leaves of celandine in the soil would raise communal spirits and lead to preparations for the celebration of the feast of Imbolc, the festival of spring. The earth goddess Brigit, the exalted one, would be praised and thanked, as many centuries later, her Christian persona, St Brigid, would be similarly honoured.
For many today, those subtle signs of seasonal change go unnoticed and no longer seem to have any practical purpose. The artificial bubble that urban dwellers inhabit restricts connection with nature, for many, to their small suburban gardens, and I believe that many have grown out of the habit of ‘knowing’ nature. Those who work or spend leisure time in our countryside or on the hills are amongst the fortunate ones who can still be full observers, or even participants, in that wonderful transition of winter into spring. As the winds and rains and darkness of winter recede, it is a time of year that can be particularly magical for those who have the opportunity to experience it at first hand.
Kilcop, 9 February
When February arrives and the darkest days of winter are fading, Teresa and I feel a need to visit our cottage at Kilcop, which we usually close up for the winter around the beginning of November. Nearby Woodstown strand is a most peaceful place at this time of the year – the beach and seascape still and sombre, the only sounds the plaintive cries of seabirds and waders with a backing of tiny waves shuffling carpets of cockle shells. It usually takes me forty minutes to walk the beach without a halt, but today I found myself stopping frequently to watch and wonder at the great flocks of brent geese and oystercatchers quartering the mud flats. The coast of west Wexford across the harbour and Creadan Head extending out towards it from the Waterford side, were visible, barely, through a curtain of haze. Ink- black cormorants, wings outstretched to dry after a morning’s fishing, were perched on the gaunt, black poles of an ancient weir which stretches out into the tide. The sun strained to burst through the overcast and it cast a silver light on the bay, which appeared as a series of silver and grey slices, forming a backdrop to the flights of brent geese coming and going.
A dog darted away from its owners walking the beach, and created havoc as it splashed out towards the assembled flocks of gulls and waders grazing the mudflats. There was an explosion of pumping wings as varieties of gulls jostled into the air with an assortment of oystercatchers, wimbrels and geese, in the midst of which, looking incongruous, there was a lumbering grey-backed crow.
When the sky is clear, the early setting sun washes the vast expanse of Woodstown bay in a special light, reflecting off the ancient cliffs of Wexford across the way, and picking up, like tiny pinpoints, whitewashed houses scattered along the low-lying landmass. Every evening the great host of rooks that have their tree-top city in the beech trees that line the grounds of Ballyglan House launch themselves from their branches in a noisy celebration, wheeling and diving and chasing, and filling the air with a cacophony of caws.
Teresa and I had a memorable rook-related wildlife experience after a walk on Woodstown beach at dusk one evening. Creadan Head extends a couple of miles out into Waterford Harbour, and we saw a myriad of rooks gather over its northern shore, a host of black dots, and as we watched they began to stream towards us in a long
