Winter News

This has been a year full of activity at Cabragh Wetlands.
Thanks to the assistance and support of Tipperary Enterprise we spent some
time during the year evaluating the role of Cabragh Wetlands and charting the course
ahead. We were ably assisted in the task by Environmental Consultant Mieke
Muyllaert and this led to our producing a business plan prepared by Lorraine Grainger.


During the year we initiated articles in The Tipperary Star, which if the feedback is
anything to go by, are appreciated by many people. Thanks sincerely to the editor Michael Dundon for his generous support.

Our Web site is up and running and well worth a regular visit. People visiting the site are from as far a field as China and the USA! Our web address is www.cabraghwetlands.ie


During the year we also produced a short DVD on the flora and fauna of the wetland, copies of which are available here at the Wetland at €10. It makes a lovely gift – recording as it does a local voluntary initiative in preserving a valuable resource. We thank all concerned for their support in bringing this fine snapshot of the wetlands to fruition. Ollie Delaney's editing is only topped by the amazing flight of the starlings captured by Seán Maher on video. We also have greeting cards on sale at the centre with photos of the flora and fauna of the wetlands.


Our school programme continues and we had a big number of Primary School visits during the year. We believe that what we have to offer here makes a valuable contribution to environmental education particularly in the field of habitat studies. The Summer Camp, popular as always, was well attended and the feedback from children and parents is very positive.


Together with Ceoltas we hosted regular evenings of Music and Song. We even managed to dance on the carpet and we look forward to having a timber floor in the future!


Our Open Day in July was well attended. Again we had Eanna Ní Leamhna who is always popular and never disappoints. Despite it being a very wet day it was enjoyable and informative. Thanks to all our loyal supporters for making this day such a success.


We were selected by the Co Council to represent Tipperary in the Pride of Place Competition. We had work to do to prepare for the event as they send out judges to view the place. We did well and received a Certificate. The profile which such competitions offer is valuable.


Bird Watch continue to use the Wetland as a bird ringing site, and they are putting together valuable information on the population and movement of birds. Rarities like the skua which Seán Maher found continue to surprise.


We also organized events in working with clay and stone during the year. Artists who conducted the workshops were Mary Scott and Philip Quinn. This was promoted by the Arts Officer of North Tipperary Co. Co. Thanks to all involved for a successful and fruitful event.


A huge loss to the centre is Marlene Harney who has returned to South Africa with her family. Marlene brought great energy and expertise to her work in promoting the wetlands. We were privileged to host a presentation to her of a beautiful painting of Cabragh Wetlands by Joe Gaynor on the 13th September. We wish Marlene, Durk and the boys success and happiness in their new home.


At this time our series of Winter talks have resumed. We hosted a selection of interesting topics all related to the environment. We believe that Cabragh Wetlands offers a valuable focus for environmental issues. Your involvement with us and your support is much appreciated.


We want to streamline our membership and we request all membership fees to be renewed at
this time. So may we give you a gentle reminder that your membership is due about now!


Many thanks for your support and Happy Christmas,
From all at Cabragh Wetlands

The Wren and Its Folklore

For almost 1000yrs before St Patrick started his mission in Ireland the Celts and their druids worshiped many gods of nature. They placed great miportance on the belief that birds were messagners of the gods. As the christian religion spread many birds were seen as being good or bad ormens. The robin, pictured so often on Christmas cards, was respected because it was supposed to have received its red breast because it kept the fire in the stable at Bethlahem alight while Mary and Joseph slept.


The wren on the other hand was sacred to the Druids of pre- christian Ireland . The Irish noun for the wren 'Dreoilín' is probably derived from 'drui-éan' or druid bird. It was regarded by the ancient Celts as a messenger of the gods and the godess Clíona (the godess of love and beauty) took the form of a wren. The soul of the Oak King who was sacrificed to the sungod Bel at the summer solstice was embodied in the wren.


Probably because it has such strong connections with the pagan religion christians discredited the wren with stories of betrayal and treachery. The wren was supposed to have made Christ's whereabouts known to the Roman soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was also blamed for betraying St Stephen to his killers. In our own history when one Irish army was preparing to attack Cromwell's forces their presence was given away by a wren tapping an Irish drum. The Irish were all killed. While the robin stood for summer the wren stood for winter.


The wren was hunted on St. Stephen's Day - Lá an Dreolín. The dead wrens were tied to a holly branch and carried from door to door and the wren boys chanted verses like:

'The wren, the wren the king of all birds

St. Stephen's Day he was caught in the furze

Up with the kettle down with the pan

Give us a penny to bury the wren.'

If the good landlady of the house didn't give them a treat the wren was buried on the doorstep which disgraced that household.

Winter and hedgehogs

As winter approaches, Mother Nature retreats, with wonderful order and efficiency, into her shell. In the flower garden the annuals have set their seed for the next generation to be able to emerge and take over from this year's dying crop. The great majority of insects have laid their eggs or crept under cover for the winter to ensure the survival of their species for another year. As you give your garden its end-of-year tidy, look out for ways of boosting their choice of over-wintering sites. Don't compost all your sweet-corn husks; leave a few secured in a wall, hedge or tree where their cells will provide great shelter for bees, ladybirds and the like. Sun flower stalks cut into 15 inch lengths and bound together for strength, will be five star accommodation for a myriad of tiny creatures. Be creative and see what you can design – get the children involved!

Frogs and toads bury themselves down into the vegetation to avoid the worst pf the winter's blast. With the increasing chilliness of October evenings, bats will have found a roosting site where they can huddle together for warmth; they might hang in hollow trees, or in the dim recesses of a barn or loft space, or even in your nest box if you have been far-sighted enough to provide one. At Cabragh Wetlands our pipistrelle bats are snoozing happily, but will still be tempted out on unseasonably mild evenings, especially as the moths they feed on may also be on the wing. Squirrels have been busy collecting and storing caches of nuts as winter food, and as it gets colder they will spend more and more time in their nest, or 'drey', popping out every now and then to locate one of their many larders and top up on their favourite nourishment.

But at this time of year do make an effort to remember the hedgehogs. They are one your garden's best friends, an avid consumer of excess slugs and snails, and you could construct a great shelter for them in a few seconds, with a few blocks or timber for walls and some planking for a roof, weighed down with a few stones. Tuck it under a hedge in a quiet corner, preferably away from the road and pop in a few handfuls of warm straw or hay. Last winter was unseasonably warm and many hedgehogs mistimed their breeding season, producing helpless, hairless young too early in the year, and many were killed by returning frosts and icy winds.

Halloween is another great danger for the hedgehogs, who love to overwinter in the depths of a heap of logs. They can retire at a moment's notice to the safety and warmth of a cosy woodpile. Are you planning a Halloween bonfire? Then please take the time to dismantle the wood before you set it alight, and give that most delightful of creatures a fair chance to get out and find himself alternative winter quarters.

October

October is upon us, a time of mists, cobwebs, fruits and berries – "mellow fruitfulness" as Keats put it. The hedgerows and trees are laden with berries, and many species will be competing to grab the fruit and either eat it now or store it for the tough winter months ahead. At Cabragh Wetlands we have a fine mature hedge, perhaps 200 or more years old, which is an invaluable habitat for exploration with visiting school groups. There within a few yards of each other you will find blackberry, spindle berries, elderberries, rosehips, haws, sloes, holly, ivy and others, all currently dripping with beautiful fruit in various stages of maturity.

There is of course a warning to be given out – many of the berries you see on trees and hedgerows are poisonous, and it is a basic rule that you do not pick and eat anything until you are absolutely sure what it is. But do not be afraid of nature's larder; our ancestors have used the fruits around them for many millennia, and it is one of the many paradoxes of our civilization that as we 'progress' and develop our food technology and convenience shopping facilities, so we are shedding the knowledge and experience of countless generations of our ancestors. With the alarming rise in food prices this year and the dire news from Wall Street and London, there seems to be a lot to be said for returning to a more simple and natural way of life, using the food around us and relying less on carbon-emitting, expensive imports from around the world.

So have a look in your garden and at the trees and hedges around you to see what might be used. Brambles are past their peak now, but there are still plenty of elderberries. They start life as softly fragrant white flowers in spring, long used to make refreshing elderflower cordial and tea, which was a partial remedy for colds and diseases of the throat. Leaves and unripe berries are poisonous, but the ripe berries are free of poison and excellent additions to blackberry pies and jam, not to mention elderberry juice and wine. Elder may be a rather unsightly tree, almost a weed given the rapidity of its growth and its ability to re-sprout from a stump, but it is home to a very large number of insects, perhaps second only to the oak as a habitat.

Small, sour crab apples are abundant this year; it is a great orchard tree for pollinating normal cooking and eating apples, and crab apples make excellent jellies for use with gamey meats, like venison, pheasant and rabbit. Go out and collect rowan berries (mountain ash), which used to be given to chickens, pigs and cows. Wild birds love them, and they are a feast for the eyes as they dangle in large bright red clusters. As rich in Vitamin C as the orange, rowans also can be turned into a gourmet jelly to accompany game dishes. Rose hips are even richer in Vitamin C than the orange, and also make excellent jams, jellies and teas.

A favourite autumn berry is on the spindle tree, which is a modest summer plant, but comes into its own at this time of year when the seed capsules redden. The birds wait until the berry splits open to reveal up to four orange seeds hanging on individual strings. Do not try cooking with spindle berries – they are poisonous. The tree gets its name from our ancestors who used the wood to make spindles for spinning yarn on their spinning-wheels. Perhaps we need to make more use of the wonders that nature provides.

Wild Gardens

It is never nice to have your garden criticised by a visitor or neighbour. Just as we tend to overrate our driving skills and take criticism very personally, so our gardens are our own territory, organized to our own taste, needs and convenience. But just reflect on the fact that your garden, whatever its size, is also home to countless living creatures, each of which has taken precisely the same length of time to evolve as you and me. Each creature, be it bird, mouse, earwig, earthworm, dragonfly, wasp, bee, moth, beetle or whatever, has its own needs and instincts, each requires sources of food and places of shelter, just like you and me, and each has its own crucial place in the food chain and the greater web of life. As wild places are gradually reduced, so our gardens become ever more important habitats for survival.

So my garden may be too untidy for somebody's taste, but it does contain a rich variety of plants, and a range of places that our fellow creatures can use to good effect. There is a great danger that an over-tidy garden will become sterile and relatively lifeless. Concrete patios, tarmac driveways, decking, cemented walls, sprayed flowerbeds and immaculately cut lawns may well be the fashion of the moment, but they are anathema to most wildlife. Remember as well that too much concrete and tarmac will reduce the ability of the ground to absorb the extraordinary rain we have had recently. If we in Thurles all pave over our gardens, the flooding downstream in Clonmel will worsen.

So as autumn sets in, leaves drop on your lawn, plants die back and the migrant birds begin their travels to avoid a Tipperary winter, don't be in too much of a rush to tidy everything up. Do you really want your neighbour to stand back and pretend to admire your immaculately scrubbed but sterile environment? Leave some grass a few inches long; this will draw in a range of insects that are essential rungs in the food chain and provide regular meals for any mammals that may live nearby. Rake up your leaves by all means, but leave some in heaps (perhaps held together in a ring of wire mesh) to provide shelter and hibernation space for insects and mammals like hedgehogs. Similarly a rough and ready pile of old logs will give wonderful protection and sustenance, especially for beetles, frogs and toads. Nest boxes are easily erected, and a good hedges give both nesting sites for your birds and 'roadways' for mammals and insects too travel along in relative safety. Leave seed heads on

A recent newspaper article bemoaned the decline of traditional bird species like the lapwing and corn bunting, with comments that the decline was probably irreversible because governments are not doing enough to halt the decline. If true, that is a terrible indictment of modern society. But why on earth do we need governments to organise everything? Are we so helpless and so controlled by the tsars of fashion that we cannot take responsibility for our own pieces of the earth and manage them in a nature-friendly way? Many of you will have children who have studied ecology, perhaps at the Cabragh Wetlands. Why not give them a little project by sending them out to do an audit of your garden's nature-friendliness. How many good features can they find in your garden that will boost the chances of some insect, plant, bird or mammal surviving the winter to breed again next spring? Any feedback will be welcomed, and we would welcome the chance to share ideas.

Butterflies and friends leaving!

David Attenborough recently remarked that we may well be moving into a post-butterfly world, which is by any standards a depressing thought from a man not normally given to unnecessary scare-mongering. True, the abysmal weather has not helped this summer, but there seems no reason to doubt that they are becoming less common. Those who focus their studies on butterflies, moths and insects are called entomologists, and they have recorded an astonishing 170,000 species of Lepidoptera around the world, about 90% of which are moths, the remainder butterflies. Butterflies are day-flying, normally brightly-coloured and with clubbed antennae, with their wings folded together over their back. Moths are more diverse, with both day and night flying species; their antennae do not have clubbed tips, but are feathered or filamentous and most have bristles at the base of their wings.

The fossil record traces butterflies back to about 40 million years ago and moths to about 100-140 million. Go back another eon to 250 million years ago and you find the emergence of the caddis fly, a winged insect very precious to the Cabragh Wetlands, and which is perhaps a link-species in the evolution of butterflies and moths.

Lepidoptera emerged alongside the first flowering plants, and many species of butterfly are still closely linked to particular plant species. At Cabragh Wetlands we are very conscious of the close association of the brimstone butterfly to the rare buckthorn tree; the female lays her eggs on the shoots of the buckthorn, and when the caterpillar emerges ten days later, it can feed on the fresh young buckthorn leaves. A month later they pupate while attached to a stem by a silk pad, and after another 14 days the new adult butterfly emerges. If the buckthorn is chopped down, the brimstone's survival is threatened. Similarly that 'unsightly' nettle patch in your garden is probably home to red admiral and peacock butterflies; the red admiral migrates from Europe in late spring and its caterpillar makes a shelter by drawing nettle leaves together with silk, eats them and moves on. The peacock lays its eggs on the underside of young stinging nettles, and its caterpillars rear up at you if you disturb them. Over-tidy your garden by spraying your nettles, and you reduce the chances of the delights of swarms of butterflies. Plant buddleia bushes (named after the collector the Rev. Adam Buddle, 1660-1715) if you want to attract in hundreds of butterflies and infuse your garden with scent and colour. It is not called the butterfly bush for nothing.

The symbiosis between butterfly and plant is crucial, and not only must the plant be present for the butterfly to flourish, it must also develop at the right moment in the year. One of the signs of climate change is that spring is coming earlier, and it is not easy for butterflies, moths and other creatures to adapt their lifecycles to a new set of man-made timings. We are interfering with natural systems that have evolved in beautiful natural harmony over millions of years. There is a web of life that links all species; all are interconnected and interdependent. Butterflies have been compared to canaries in the coalmines; when something is not quite right with the environment, they are seriously affected. We wrote recently about the serious predicament facing bees; now it is the turn of the butterfly. Man also needs a harmonious and healthy natural environment, and take time to ponder on the recent World Health Organization's prediction that by 2020 mental illness will be the most common health problem facing us. Getting back in harmony with nature and all of creation is vital for us as individuals as well as for man as a species.

Talking of entomologists, this is a sad week for Cabragh Wetlands. For four years we have relied hugely on the dedication, expertise and energy of Marlene Harney to get our educational programmes up and running, writing worksheets, collecting specimens, making displays, helping school groups, giving a wonderful lecture on pollination, pond dipping, advising on décor, and countless other contributions. She deserves a full-page spread to herself. Sadly for us the time has come for the Harney family to migrate back to South Africa. We are immensely grateful for all that she has given to the Wetlands, not least in her professionalism and scientific thoroughness, but also in terms of friendship and simple human generosity. Fair winds and bon voyage, Marlene, and we wish you, Dirk and the boys the very best for the next phase in your globe-trotting lives. Auf wiedersehen.

Starlings

During the winter months starlings feed up to 30 miles from their night time roost. As evening approaches the flocks of starlings returning to the roost and begin to form into progressively larger flocks. Large pre-roost groups form in places where the birds can get one last meal before nightfall such as Cabragh Wetlands. Just before the birds settle down for the night they fly in beautiful formations, over the evening sky in one of the most beautiful natural displays to be seen in Ireland. At Cabragh Wetlands these flocks have been estimated to be tens of thousands in size. We are holding a joint event with the Tipperary branch of Bidwatch Ireland on Sunday 16^th November, when Kevin Collins will talk at 3.00 pm on the Winter Birds of the Cabragh Wetlands, followed by an evening Starling Watch (weather permitting). Come along and enjoy this wonderful sight! Videos of this sight from other locations can be viewed on Youtube - an example of what can be expected can be seen here

Winter Talks

Cabragh Wetlands series of Winter Talks gets underway this coming Wednesday (22^nd October) at 8.00pm with a talk by Catherine Keena on 'Farming and Wildlife'. Catherine works for Teagasc and is based at Kildalton, Co. Kilkenny. She is a well-known figure in environmental circles, speaking frequently to a variety of audiences and leading field trips and walks to show both farmers and the public a better way forward for environmental management. Her speciality is in Countryside Management, and only this week she has been involved in the Teagasc Biodiversity Demonstration in Bansha, focusing on native trees and hedgerows.

This talk should be of real interest to the general public and of great importance for those who are involved in land management, be it of a substantial farm or just your own garden. While the news is dominated by banking crashes and credit crunches, such stories as the report last week that up to a quarter of mammal species are threatened with extinction are largely ignored by the media, pushed to the middle pages and unnoticed by the bulk of the public. Which will seem the more important to our grandchildren – bloated bonuses to bankers, a drop in house prices and government bale-outs of banks, or the loss of habitats, destruction of biodiversity, and the reduction and elimination of a great range of our fellow species? We all need to look at what we can do at a local level to improve wildlife habitats.

So please come along to the Cabragh Wetlands next Wednesday evening, at 8.00 pm to hear about Farming and Wildlife, with, we hope, an emphasis on wetland management. We are privileged to have Catherine speak to us and we all have much to learn about best practice in managing the small pieces of the earth for which we take responsibility. Entry is free.

Cabragh Wetlands Winter Talks will continue in November with a double bill of particular interest to bird watchers. We are holding a joint event with the Tipperary branch of Bidwatch Ireland on Sunday 16^th November, when Kevin Collins will talk at 3.00 pm on the Winter Birds of the Cabragh Wetlands, followed by an evening Starling Watch (weather permitting). On Wednesday 26^th November local teacher and naturalist Tom Gallagher will give a talk at 8.00pm on 'Garden Birds, their Song, Folklore and how to attract them'. Make a note in your diaries.

Researchers Wanted

The watchwords of the Cabragh Wetlands Trust are "Conservation, Recreation, Education", core values that cement the Trust firmly at the heart of the community. Conservation speaks for itself, and with our Open Days, talks, workshops, camps and flourishing school visits, we are doing a lot to develop recreational and educational programmes. With third-level students heading back to University, it seems a good moment to raise the important issue of higher education.

The Cabragh Wetlands are a potential treasure trove for the serious student. Very little research has been carried out here, apart from some crucial work in the mid-1990's which established just how important it was to preserve the wetlands because of the rarity and diversity of species and habitats. More recently valuable work has been done on invertebrates like beetles and butterflies, but much more remains to be done. As the area has had almost no top-flight academic research, any work is almost bound to be original and ground-breaking, and hence should have a very good chance of earning high marks. Any examiner will appreciate the vibrancy of originality.

Botanists, biologists, zoologists, entomologists, hydrologists, geographers, historians, climatologists……there is something here for you. We need talented undergraduate and post-graduate students to get into the wetlands and find out just what is there, how well it is surviving, and how it can be best protected. Whether you are a student at the TI, or a native of the area who is heading to Dublin, Cork, Limerick or elsewhere to study, do bear in mind that a unique opportunity is available here in the heart of North Tipperary. We need to establish good base-line data about the flora and fauna of the Wetlands, both native and seasonal visitors, and to find out more about how the ecology of the wetlands works as a whole, from the flow and purity of the water, to the interrelationships between species in the waterways, reedbeds, watermeadows and hedgerows. There are about a dozen distinct habitats across the site, all worthy of serious study.

Any ambitious and enthusiastic student would be doing themselves a disservice if they did not consider doing their research at Cabragh, and in principle all the Trust wants in return is a copy of your research and results, and if appropriate a presentation to the committee. Bear us in mind, and pass the message on to friends and fellow students.

Apologies!

Apologies for the recent absence of the Cabragh Wetlands website from the world wide web! We are now back online and hope to update it further soon. Upcoming events include the start of the Winter Lecture Series on the 22nd October with a talk on habitat preservation by Catherine Keena of Countryside Management, Kildalton Agricultural College. Further talks will look at garden birds, evolution theory and Darwin, the history of Thurles, hunting and conservation, complexity theory and taking time to awaken your sense of interconnectedness! A wide and varied topics for all. Further details of times of the talks will be on the website soon

Taxidermists and all that!

The taxidermy industry must be very pleased with the Cabragh Wetlands, whichmay be committed to conserving life, but is not beyond making good use ofany corpses that are found in good condition. Our collection of stuffedcreatures is growing steadily, and at the time of typing this, I can see twopheasants, a shoveller duck, red squirrel, barn owl, stoat, kestrel, skuaand a splendid fox.These specimens were almost all found within or close to the wetlands; somewere road kills, though we must hope against hope that drivers mature andslow down so that the death toll on the roads is reduced. Have you everstopped to think about how many non-human lives are lost as a result of baddriving? If the global human loss to traffic accidents is around 50 million,the non-human toll must be in the billions by now. And we call it progress!Still, that fox is rather splendid. He has the softest coat of ginger-redfur, with surprisingly short black legs. The children will love the chanceto get up close to such a wild creature and even dare to put a finger in itsmouth and feel the points of his teeth. The tiny stoat has an even moreimpressive set of teeth, razor sharp and almost serrated.The skua is the odd one out, yet he really was found in the CabraghWetlands, as the Star told us in an article last autumn. Identification isstill not finalized, but it is most likely a young pomarine or arctic skua,probably bred off the west or north coast of Scotland and a summer visitorto Ireland. It perhaps lost its way in bad weather last October, came inlandand died of starvation in the Wetlands.As a frequent visitor to uninhabited Scottish islands, your correspondenthas first hand experience of being dive-bombed by arctic skuas, which areutterly fearless in defence of their nests. Skuas are guilty of robbery withviolence, harassing terns, auks and gulls until in panic they disgorge theirfood for the skua to steal. If you go near their nests, they will fly highand swoop down, often working in pairs to drive you away. And if you don'tgo, they will hit you, diving in feet first from behind and cracking you onthe head with those sharp webbed feet.We have placed our stuffed skua eight feet up a wall and you can get someidea of the thrill of him diving at you. Come and see him! And if you doencounter some poor creature on the road, stuff him in a bag, pop him in thefreezer and give us a call. Keep your local taxidermist in work!

Every little helps!

The nomination of the Cabragh Wetlands Trust for an All-Ireland Pride of Place Conservation Award is very good news both for the Trust and for the local community. North Tipperary County Council has made the nomination for a cross-border award, in conjunction with Cooperation Ireland. Whether or not we get to shake hands with the President at the autumn Awards Ceremony is perhaps immaterial….though it would be nice to win! What matters is that there is growing recognition at a national level of the key role that community groups play in preserving their local habitats.

It would be easy to leave ecological protection to government, whether at county, national or European levels, and they have vital roles to play in setting ground rules and providing expertise and watchdogs….and money. But we have to believe that we as individuals are the ultimate guardians of our own habitats. If we do not care for the health of our own piece of earth, why should anyone else? It would be good to think that it is morally uplifting for us to be involved, and certainly the best possible example and bequest to our children.

The recent death of Edward Lorenz robbed us of the man recognized as the developer of “Chaos Theory”. He once ran a weather-prediction programme on his computer and decided to double-check the results, but to save time reduced his figures from six decimal places to three, an apparently insignificant adjustment of one part in a thousand. The results were dramatically different, and the implications were developed in his 1972 talk: “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”

Small deviations, small actions, can have massive and unpredictable results. Chaos Theory has had a profound impact on scientific and social theory, resulting in “one of the most dramatic changes in mankind’s view of nature since …..Newton”. It’s up there with Darwin and Einstein.

We have to believe that what we do as individuals and a community matters. Who knows what difference putting a coin in a bucket might make, or teaching your child about flowers, or buying binoculars instead of an ipod, or adding your perspective, expertise and enthusiasm to the work of a local group. If we all act locally, we can make a difference globally.

Bird Ringing

The Munster Ringing group has been continuing its seven year programme of ringing birds at a number of sites across the region, to try and build up some solid data about what is happening to our bird populations in this time of environmental degradation. One of their regular ringing sites is the Cabragh Wetlands, and it is worth stopping if you see them at work – there is often something interesting to see.

A recent capture was a Common Grasshopper Warbler (locustella naevia) – a tiny, secretive bird with an olive-brown back, whitish underside and a faint white stripe over its eye. A very shy bird, it loves to hide in rough tussocky undergrowth and thickets, and will tolerate both damp and dry habitats. It must have found a perfect summer home at Cabragh after its extraordinary migration from sub-SaharanAfrica.

Its numbers have declined significantly in recent years, though it is still spread widely in Ireland and Britain. Loss of habitat appears to be the main cause; people are too quick to dismiss the sort of rough ground the grasshopper warbler loves as valueless.

When people are about, the grasshopper warbler will stay hidden (a sensible bird!), but you have a good chance of hearing it. Its call is easily confused with that of an insect, and has been compared to a mill- or spinning-wheel, or the winding mechanism of a fishing-rod reel. It seems to be able to throw its voice, like a ventriloquist, and the sound can carry over a mile on a still night. One estimate is that it can ‘sing’ 1400 double notes per minute, and up to 250,000 during a single night.

Preserve habitat, cherish and enjoy the presence of such amazing creatures.

Bats

As you walk around the Wetlands on these summer evenings one can see bats flying above you. With the launch of the new Batman film it is worth having a look at these fascinating creatures.

Bats are mammals which means that they are warm blooded, give birth to their young rather than lay eggs and also feed their young milk. They typically become active in late spring and early summer. A group of female bats come together to roost and form a nursery. Each female gives birth to a single baby that they can identify by its smell and sound. An interesting feature of bat behaviour is how they mate. Although mating will take place at this time of year (August) the female will not release her egg (ovulate) until next spring. She keeps the sperm with her as she hibernates and then will become pregnant next spring. As they hibernate over the winter their body temperature will drop to 8^oC.

The old wives tale that bats will get caught in your hair is not true. Although bats eyesight can be good for daytime, like humans they have poor eyesight at night. Therefore, bats locate their prey using a system known as echolocation. They emit high pitched sounds beyond the range of human hearing and by listening to the sound as it bounces off objects they can locate insects and other objects and tell how big it is and in what direction it is moving. Using special equipment we have been able to record the bat sounds from Cabragh Wetlands and these can be heard on www.cabraghwetlands.ie. Come out and see them some evening – we promise with their expert echolocation they won’t get caught in your hair!

Come and help!

We are still frequently asked what the Cabragh Wetlands are, so for those of you still unsure, here is a quick overview of what the Trust is about.

Keen local amateur naturalists were aware that something catastrophic could be about to happen, when in the late 1980’s, the decision to close the Sugar Plant was taken. The settling ponds were a haven for a large number of birds, both native permanent residents and seasonal migrants from both the Arctic and Africa, and the flood plains around were well known for the range of plants and insects that flourished. It was feared that the habitat faced possible destruction, with housing estates or landfill mooted as potential “developments” for this unique ecosystem.

The settling ponds were lost, but the formation of the Cabragh Wetlands Trust, generous assistance from the Sugar Company and support from a variety of authorities (N. Tipp County Council, Shannon Development, Leader, Heritage Council, Tipperary Enterprise, FAS and others) enabled the Trust to purchase a few acres and work with local landowners to manage the larger wetland area in an ecologically sustainable way.

Conservation is the Trust’s raison d’etre, but we are in this for the long term, and the best way to ensure the permanent survival of this haven is to make it a community project, and to make recreation and education secondary priorities. So while we are committed to maintaining the wetlands ecosystem, water purity, healthy habitats and biodiversity, we are also establishing the Wetlands Centre as a forum to enhance public understanding of environmental issues, as a support for all levels of education through field studies courses and research and through public lectures and courses. We are doing what we can to promote both our natural and cultural heritage, and to encourage community involvement and recreation.

That’s a very broad brief, and one that needs support and involvement by a large number of people. If you want to help, come out and see us one morning, or call us on 0504-43879. The next Open Day will be on Saturday August 30^th during Heritage Week, but the walkways are almost always open for a quiet, contemplative, restorative stroll.

Wild at the Wetlands 2008!

A day of events at Cabragh Wetlands to celebrate Heritage Week 2008 will take place on Saturday 30th August from 1-5pm.

There will be two workshops sponsored by an Arts Grant from North Tipperary County Council to cater for adults and children. Placesf for these workshops is limited and registration is essential so please contact us using the details below if you are interested in attending the workshops to ensure that places are available.

1. The Studio, Holycross will facilitate an Art and Craft workshop for 20 children age 4 yrs and up.
Artist Mary Scott and Jackie Matthews will take you on a creative journey using clay, felt (sheep wool) and materialws from the natural environment, culminating in an Exhibition of Art With Nature. Cost of workshop is only €10

2. Philip Quinn on Stonemad, Holycross will run an introductory stone carving workshop. This is your chance to leave your mark (under expert guidance) on a large block that we hope will become the base of a permanent statue for the Wetland Centre. Places will be limited to about 6 and it will not be suitable for younger children. The cost of this workshop is also only €10

In addition to the workshops here will be an Open Afternoon, with guided walks of the education centre, bird hides and wetlands which will be suitable for all ages. The bird hide has a lift to reach it for those who are unable to use the stairs. Tea and light refreshments will be provided allowing a fun day for those of all age groups. Admission to all events apart from the workshops is free.
For further details Call 0504- 43879 ( mornings) Mobile 087-7962177 for more details or email info@cabraghwetlands.ie.

Open Day Thank You!

Last week was a very busy time at Cabragh Wetlands. Many hours of intensive preparation by a very dedicated team of volunteers lay behind the Open Day, which we think has boosted our coffers by something in the region of €5000. That will make a great difference to our annual finances, and will help us maintain the many habitats and biodiversity of this exceptional site.

It is not possible to thank everyone who helped, but it was a revelation to see how many family, friends and neighbours rallied round to ensure the success of the day. It showed that there is a real depth of community spirit alive and flourishing in the Thurles area, and reminds us of what can be achieved if we all give a few hours a year to worthy local causes. With judging approaching for our Pride of Place nomination, there was a reminder of the potential strength and achievement that is possible if groups and individuals cooperate and work together. Wouldn’t the world be a healthier place if we focused more on mutual aid rather than rivalry and competition?

The day was a reminder too of the creative talent in our midst – stone and wood carvers, artists, photographers, basket weaver, painters, gardeners, cooks and bakers all displayed their talents to good effect and contributed to the buzzing atmosphere. It was instructive to be able to see and hear about developments in greener energy and house-building, and to find out about the educational work of the Wetlands Centre and the courses at the Tipperary Institute. There were animals to see, and a chance to walk with Eanna Ni Lamhna, who offered great insights into the plants, birds and insects of the wetlands. And we must not forget our noble auctioneer, who defied the rain and some customer resistance to persuade us to open our wallets and bid for a good bargain. Thanks too to the many who donated raffle prizes, auction items and bric-a-brac; without your generosity the day would not have gone so well.

Wild at the Wetlands 2008

This is a preliminary notice of a day of events at Cabragh Wetlands to celebrate Heritage Week 2008. It will take place on Saturday 30^th August from 1-5pm.

There will be two workshops sponsored by an Arts Grant from North Tipperary County Council.

1. The Studio, Holycross will facilitate an Art and Craft workshop for 20 children age 4 yrs and up.

Artist Mary Scott and Jackie Matthews will take you on a creative journey using clay, felt (sheep wool) and materialws from the natural environment, culminating in an Exhibition of Art With Nature.

2. Philip Quinn on Stonemad, Holycross will run an introductory stone carving workshop. This is your chance to leave your mark (under expert guidance) on a large block that we hope will become the base of a permanent statue for the Wetland Centre. Places will be limited to about 6 and it will not be suitable for younger children.

A small charge will be made for these courses- details later. In addition there will be an Open Afternoon, with guided walks, tea and light refreshments and admission to this is free.

For further details Call 0504- 43879 ( mornings) Mobile 087-7962177 for more details or email info@cabraghwetlands.ie. Further details will appear soon!

Cabragh Wetlands Summer Camp

When a school trip comes to Cabragh Wetlands, we ask the children: "Are we nature too?" They pause and reflect, but eventually agree that we too are part of nature. That question and response have implications.

We exist in a communion with a wider web of life, inter-connected and inter-dependent, just like every other species. Of course we have our distinctive features, not least that we can reflect on and delight in this wonderful world, but other species have their own unique gifts as well. The fish can live underwater; the owl can hear the heartbeat of the mouse thirty feet away, and swoop and catch it with extraordinary precision. This world of ours works because everything is in balance and inter-connected, is a communion of subjects.

Yet in the past one hundred years we have seen our species grow from one billion to almost seven billion, with almost every other species in decline and too many already gone into premature extinction. We have been happy to see ourselves as the crown of creation, but are perhaps slowly coming to see that we are as vulnerable and inter-dependent as every other species. The Burmese cyclone and Chinese earthquake remind us of our frailty before the forces of the natural world.

When we place a seed in the ground it grows because the micro-organisms in the soil create the conditions for the plant to grow and produce food for us. If those micro-organisms were not there to do their bit, we would have no food to eat. Soil purity is crucial for our survival. Did you know that there is more life below the surface of the earth than on it? Think about that the next time you are tempted to pour chemicals onto the earth or dump potentially toxic material onto a land fill site or discard plastic bags and sheeting which suffocate, rot and destroy the life in the ground beneath.

How do we address such challenges? Central to any corrective action must be to plant the seed of awareness in our children and communities. If you want your child to experience the joy of discovering and understanding nature, why not enrol him/her in the Detective in the Wild Summer Camp at Cabragh Wetlands from July 7th-11th 2008. Ring Seamus on 0504-23831 for further details. Last year one satisfied dad commented: “The children learnt about things that really matter.”

Cuckoo spit (or is it from a witch?)

Blobs of frothy liquid on young stems and leaves can be seen as you walk around the Wetlands. You may wonder what is in these blobs and their name does not give any more detail. They are commonly known as “Cuckoo spits” but apart from appearing about the same time as cuckoos are heard, the froth has no connection with any bird. Certainly cuckoo-spit was an important ingredient in witches' brew (as in Macbeth) and in Scandinavian countries the froth is known as 'witches' spit'! Instead it is secreted by the immature stages of sap-sucking insects known as froghoppers. The adult insects live openly on the plant and do not produce any cuckoo spit.

The froghopper is an insect, and a member of the order Homoptera. They are called froghoppers because they are able to hop significant distances when disturbed. They feed on plant sap which they extract from the leaves and stems of plants. The life-cycle of the Froghopper is in three stages: egg, nymph, and adult. In this respect it is similar to such insects as grasshoppers and dragonflies. Up to 100 eggs are laid by the adult females in the late summer into an incision made into the tissues of the host plant. The eggs hatch into nymphs the following spring.

The nymph is the sexually immature stage. It resembles the adult in shape but unlike the adult has no wings and only rudimentary legs and eyes. Crucially, it has but a thin outer body layer, or exoskeleton, which unlike the adult's is not covered by a waxy layer. For this reason it needs to protect itself from desiccation. This is achieved by surrounding itself in a frothy mass of soapy bubbles known colloquially as cuckoo-spit. The froth also helps to protect the developing nymph from predators by disguising the nymph. If determined to seek out the insect, the predator will be dissuaded by the unpalatable taste of the froth. Enclosed within this froth, the nymph moults several times before emerging as an adult in early summer. The froth is created by the insect excreting a fluid, the result of excess undigested plant sap, exuding through the anus. This sap, as it is excreted, mixes with a secretion from the abdominal glands. Air bubbles are introduced through a special valve on the abdomen which acts like a bellows, and contact with the air causes the liquid to ferment, forming the froth.

Snipes in the air!

Anyone walking through the Wetlands on these summer evenings will hear the strange sound of the snipe as it dives through the air. This sound is made by its outer tail feathers and the sound has been likened to that of a kid goat – hence its name in Irish “An Gabhairin” or the little goat. The sound is made by the male during the breeding season and the perched male shown here makes a chucka-chucka call. If you stumble across the snipe as you walk along the paths it explodes into the air in a zig-zag flight, with a rasping ‘creech’ call. Its plumage is brown, with golden-buff and black stripes on the head and back and white edges to its tail. It uses that long beak to probe in the mud for worms and invertebrates, the sensitive tip helping it feel for prey. The snipe has the extraordinary ability to open the tip of its bill while the rest remains closed. Hidden amidst vegetation the nest usually contains four eggs, olive-brown with dark blotches. After 20 days the young hatch and leave the nest almost immediately, able to fly after just two weeks and fully grown after seven. The snipe is the bird of the wetlands and the natural choice for our logo.

Open Day

The Annual Cabragh Wetlands Open Day takes place again this year on Saturday 6th July with the gates opening at 1.00p.m. A wide variety of events are planned for the day for all members of the family. There will be an exhibition of local arts and crafts and the education centre and bird hide will be open for all to see. Eanna Ni Lamhna, of RTE and An Taisce fame, will lead exciting guided walks of the wildlife of the Wetlands later in the afternoon. There will also be a raffle and auction of a variety of interesting objects. Tea and refreshments will be available and admission is free. Email info@cabraghwetlands.ie for further information

The Swift

Swifts (Apus apus) are birds that can be seen flying at high speeds and screaming as they fly in these summer months, as they catch flies in the Cabragh Wetlands. They are experts at this and parent swifts returning with food for their young reveal a large bulge below the beak due to a mass of insects packed into the throat pouch glued together in saliva.

The family scientific name, Apodidae, comes Ancient Greek, meaning "without feet", since swifts have very short legs and never settle voluntarily on the ground, perching instead on vertical surfaces. This is because it would be too difficult, if not impossible, for swifts to take off from the ground due to their short legs. Due to this swifts even sleep and mate on the wing. Swifts have a worldwide distribution in tropical and temperate areas, but like swallows and martins, the swifts of temperate regions are strongly migratory and winter in the tropics.

Swifts have a characteristic shape, with a short forked tail and very long swept-back wings that resemble a boomerang. They are all dark apart from a whitish chin. Swifts use the same nest year after year, merely adding fresh material. This is caught in the air. As a result, building is erratic being most frequent when there is sufficient wind to sweep suitable material into the air. The nest is glued to a vertical surface with saliva, which is the basis for bird's nest soup.

Water, Water Everywhere

It may be stating the obvious to say that water is an essential ingredient in the wetland system, but how many of us think about the implications of this? Water is the primary factor controlling the environment and the range of habitats that surround us. Flora and fauna have evolved to give and receive within a wetland community, with plants like the iris contributing by oxidising the water, in turn allowing other plants and creepy-crawlies to survive and flourish. The purity of the water supply is the prime reason why the Cabragh Wetlands supports such a variety of species.

Wetlands are an important feature in the landscape for a variety of reasons, yet 50% of all wetlands in Europe have disappeared in the last century. In Ireland about one million acres of wetland have been drained in the past 150 years. Pure, fresh water is a precious resource; only about 1% of the earth’s water is available for drinking at any one time, with another 2% locked up in the ice-caps.

Piped water has made life very comfortable for us. We turn on our tap and there it is. Up to 40% of the water we use is flushed down the toilet – a hugely disproportionate amount. Added to this is all the detergent we use to keep our homes clean and germ-free, and which is then returned to the water-table. Water from our toilets and sinks goes directly into the earth or to a treatment plant to be cleaned at great cost.

Earth is finding it difficult to cope with our demanding lifestyles, and hence water quality is suffering. The fewer toxins that go into the earth, the better it is for both the environment and people. There is a range of eco-friendly products now available, from washing-up liquid to toilet cleaner, and a couple of bricks in your cistern will save a surprising amount of fresh water.

In May 2006 the European Community adopted an action plan to meet the target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010 – a major undertaking. When we learn to see wetlands as a resource rich in biodiversity, we will begin to appreciate their true value and worth. It is a bad start to hear that Ireland came last in a European poll asking the public for their understanding of biodiversity.

Summer Camp 2008

The annual summer camp for primary school pupils in 2nd to 5th classes takes place once again from July 7-11 2008 from 9.00a.m. to 2.30p.m. each day. This camp entitled "Detective in the Wild" allows children to get to grips with the natural world and delve into the secrets of the local wilderness looking at history, flowers, animals, birds and insects and the many habitats of North Tipperary. Cost of the course is €70 including the cost of trips. Please note that numbers are limited and places are allocated on a first come first serve basis. For application forms please contact James Duggan Tel 0504 23831

Hear the Dawn Chorus

Come hear Nature's greatest symphony (if you can get out of bed!)

BirdWatch Ireland National Dawn Chorus Day 2008 - Sunday 18^th May

Meet at 5:00am in car park at Cabragh Wetlands, Thurles. All events are open to the public and are free of charge; it is not necessary to be a member of BirdWatch Ireland to attend. Children are very welcome, but must be supervised by a parent or guardian. Please note that dogs and other pets are not permitted.

Greylag Geese

Recently a small flock of Greylag geese can be seen in Cabragh Wetlands each day on the flooded grasslands and are easily visible from the pathways. These geese are the ancestors of most domestic geese. The geese are migratory, moving south or west in winter,. This species is one of the last to migrate, and it is thought that "greaylag" signifies in English "late", "last", or "slow", as in laggard, a loiterer, or old terms such as lagman, the last man, lagteeth, the posterior molar or "wisdom" teeth (as the last to appear), and lagclock, a clock that is behind time. Thus the Greylag Goose is the grey goose, which in England when the name was given, was not strongly migratory but lagged behind the other wild goose species when they left for their northern breeding quarters.

Graveyards - Full of life!

Graveyards instinctively suggest places of sadness and gloom, but the older ones especially can be teeming with life. Apart from the occasional outing with the mower or strimmer, habitats remain relatively untouched for year after year, allowing colonies of plants, insects, birds and mammals to establish a permanent base. Graveyards in towns can provide oases for species struggling to survive, and in some rural areas are the last examples of ancient grassland meadow. Don’t keep those old graveyards too neat and tidy!

To develop this theme, Dr Siobahn Geraghty, North Tipperary Heritage Officer, will be giving a talk at the Cabragh Wetlands on Wednesday 21^st May at 8.00pm sharp. The title is appropriate: “Graveyards: Full of Life”.

The evening is organized in conjunction with the Holycross Tidy Village Committee which, like so many other groups around the county, does such vital work in keeping up appearances and preserving valuable habitat. We invite all other such groups and those interested in graveyards to come along to the Cabragh Wetlands to hear Siobahn’s talk. She is an expert in the unusual subject of archaeo-botany, and it really does promise to be a fascinating event.

There is no charge for the talk, though donations will be welcome. This is a chance to hear about an important and unusual topic, and no doubt Siobahn will be willing to take a few questions on her wider role as Heritage Officer.

Garganey Duck

The sighting of a pair of garganey duck at Cabragh Wetlands highlights the importance of preserving a network of such wildlife havens, which species can use as stepping stones to re-establish themselves and gradually extend their range and breeding colonies. For most of the last century garganey (anas querquedula) were no more than rare wanderers in most of the British Isles, with breeding confined to the fens of the Norfolk Broads in the east of England. In the 1960’s a few were visiting Wexford, but not breeding, and in 2005 there were estimated to be just 130 pairs spread thinly across these islands at the western limit of their extensive Eurasian range.

Now there is a pair at Cabragh, which provides their ideal habitat – still water, flooded ditches, wet meadows and a surrounding of lush, rushy marshland into which they can scurry and hide if disturbed. They are the second smallest European duck, graceful but with rather dull plumage. The drake has a conspicuous white stripe over his eye.

Don’t be put off if they fail to quack at you in the expected duck-like manner. The male advertises himself with a cracking sound, which has been likened to breaking ice, or running your finger along the teeth of a comb. You might even mistake its call for a woodpecker.

Annual General Meeting

It’s coming up to AGM time at the Cabragh Wetlands. As always the Annual General Meeting will be held on the first Tuesday in May – May 6th at 8.30 pm at the Visitors’ Centre. It is very important that members come along to review the progress made by the Trust, elect officers and give input into the direction that the organization is taking.

Main developments have taken place in the education programme, with nearly a thousand children spending a few hours in the field in 2007, learning and reflecting on key issues of habitat, species conservation and man’s relationship with the natural world. There are major issues to consider about how this programme can be sustained and perhaps developed at secondary and third levels.

On the recreation front, more groups are using the Wetlands for gatherings; traditional music evenings, a gentle outdoor experience for people with disabilities, a place for a contemplative walk, an evening birdwatching and recently a group meeting regularly to reflect on environmental issues from a more spiritual angle. We hope to develop a series of creative workshops with local artists, craftsmen and writers.

On the practical side we have had major reports in the last 18 months looking at the role of the Wetlands as an element in the wider national conservation structure, raising issues about our organizational effectiveness, land management and financing. One clear lesson is that we need interested parties to ‘brainstorm’ about our medium-term priorities, such as building extensions, charging for usage and land management.

AGM’s are key moments in the calendar of voluntary organizations. This is a chance for members to hear from the Committee, ask questions, have their say and elect officers. Non-members are welcome to come to the AGM and find out more about this organization that already offers so much to the Thurles area, and could be a key player in the future as environmental issues rise up the public agenda.

With the busy Easter holiday behind us, many of us will be spending more time in the garden, getting it in shape for the summer. Obviously we all want our gardens to look nice, but just as with clothing, colour schemes, shape of cars and so on, what we consider to be ‘looking nice’ is largely a matter of fashion.

We praise our neighbours for their immaculate lawns, weed-free flower beds, symmetrical shrubs and exotic ornamentals. That’s fine, but remember that in nature things are rarely so neat and tidy. Many birds, insects and mammals need the right sort of vegetation for cover, nesting, breeding and feeding. Try to leave some of your garden wild, and think twice before you rip out, or douse with chemical poisons, plants that are so easily dismissed as weeds. One definition of a weed might be that it is a plant that is currently out of fashion.

There is often a crucial symbiotic relationship between one species of insect and one particular plant. Lose the plant and you have potentially destroyed a local insect colony that is already struggling to maintain a foothold in our increasingly artificial man-made environment.

Caterpillars of the peacock and tortoiseshell butterflies need a patch of stinging nettles for food; ragwort supports the black and orange-banded caterpillars of the day-flying cinnabar moth. Hedgehogs love slugs. Poison the slug and you poison the hedgehog, which is a great friend to the gardener, especially if you have an old pile of logs in a corner where it can shelter and hibernate.

Huge flower heads of cow parsley and hogweed are south for nectar by beetles and flies, which themselves help clear the excrement and bodies if dead insects, thus releasing nutrients as food for plants, and help to pollinate by transferring pollen.

Come out to the Cabragh Wetlands and see how if left ‘untidy’, nature creates beauty and biodiversity in abundance.

The Environment as Classroom

Recently Cabragh Wetlands was privileged to have Prof. Tom Collins addressing parents and teachers on the topic: “The Environment as Classroom”. Prof. Collins is the Head of the Education Department at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth and is currently chair of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. Since his talk was so well received, it seems appropriate to share some of its essence with the broader public.

According to Prof. Collins culture and heritage form an important part of our children’s lives. This differs from place to place as each area has its own ‘story’. Schools should give children a sense of that place, a sense of where and to whom they belong. “Take down the walls of the school and link the child to the environment” says Prof. Collins. Encourage children to explore the terrain of their local landscape and thus allow them to have a sense of their own identity. Ireland is currently facing an influx of many different nationalities and education plays an important role in connecting the child’s story to their local place and culture.

Prof. Collins argued that children are too often asked to ‘consume’ information - being a consumer is a soulless exercise. To produce is creative. Children learn through their hands by doing. For example, you won’t teach a child to tie a shoe lace without having a shoe and lace to practise on. And this is true with many other skills also.

Referring specifically to oil consumption, Prof. Collins explained that we are presently living on nature’s capital not nature’s interest. We are depleting resources that cannot be replaced. Our children are heading into a future that will bring many challenges, so it is important to enable them to have the confidence and self-esteem to cope with the inevitable changes facing them, and key to this will be to teach hem to live life fully within their local environment and heritage.

Summer Snowflake

Spring has finally arrived with swaths of daffodils brightening up road margins and gardens. At Cabragh Wetland splashes of yellow can be seen as the first marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) appear. This huge buttercup is a striking and unmistakable feature of damp places in early spring. Each flower is composed of five sepals which open at daybreak as sunlight hits them; the glossy dark-green heart-shaped leaves are easily recognized. Like many other members of the buttercup family, the whole plant is poisonous.

The summer snowflake (Leucojum aestivum), is also in full bloom at the moment. This is a beautiful and rare flower, very localized in Ireland, which grows in relative abundance in the Wetlands. The daffodil-like leaves are dark green and grow 30-50cm high. The flower stalk unfurls to reveal three to six bell-shaped, nodding flowers; each has 6 snow white petals with a green spot at the tip. Despite its common name, the snowflake flowers from March to May, and resembles the much smaller snowdrop (10-20cm ) which has just 3 sepals.

Cabragh was recently identified by a leading environmentalist as being perhaps the best site in Ireland for this exceptional plant. Appreciate what you have on your doorstep. Come out to the Wetlands and see these beautiful flowers, along with many others that will come into bloom in the spring. Bring your wellies – the footpaths are still very wet and mud. And a gentle request: all wild flowers are protected and may not be picked.

Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but memories…..and photographs!

The Swallow

As millions of birds all over the globe are already on massive migration journeys we in Ireland witness the Redwing and fieldfare (the winter thrushes) the geese and swans leaving us for northern Europe and Asia. It is the arrival from far away South Africa of the humble Swallow that we are looking out for. Earlier sightings of single brave birds could be as early as February but the main influx happens from mid March onwards.
The most distinctive aspect of the flying swallow is its forked tail. Its upper parts are a steely blue – black, the undersides are an off-white colour and the throat is orangey-red. These distinctive, agile flyers have learned to live with humans and exploit roosting and nesting sites provided by buildings and barns in the countryside and on the edges of villages and towns. The cup shaped nest is attached to or resting on a rafter. It is made of mud and lined with fine hay and feathers. Four to six eggs are laid and hatch in about two weeks. Incubation is by the female only.
But why do swallows migrate such a vast distance to spend the summer with us? If a swallow flew in a straight line it would have travelled 6000 miles to get here taking it over the Kalahari Desert, the tropical forests, the vast Sahara Desert and then through Spain and onto Ireland.
The Irish climate provides them with the right temperatures for hatching and rearing young. The long summer days allow them to feed for up to 18 hours out of the 24. Their food is mainly flying insects which one caught on the wing. Up to 3000 flies a day are eaten by on swallow.
Our parents and grand parents who were so connected to the earth, looked forward always to the arrival of the swallow. They regarded it as good luck for a swallow to nest in their shed as they believed this brought protection against lightening for fire. They regarded it as bad luck to kill a swallow. If you interfered with its nest it gave you warts. This was probably an effort by them to protect a bird that fascinated and delighted them.
They also taught us that one swallow does not make a summer!.

Little Egret

The old 1970’s Collins Birds of Britain and Europe shows conclusively the little egret to be a bird of the Mediterranean, with its range pushing up through Romania, Bulgaria and into southern France. Before 1957 there were only ever 23 recorded in the British Isles. A breeding colony established in Brittany in 1960 was the launch pad for crossing the Channel in 1980 with 600 sightings by 1990. The first recorded breeding in Ireland came in 1997 and by 2004 a breeding colony on 12 pairs was established in County Cork.

Clearly this is a bird with colonization on its mind, as slowly and steadily the little egret spreads ever further inland. Now we can report that 13 individuals were seen together at the Cabragh Wetlands at the beginning of March - an enormously exciting development, and possibly another sign that global warming is changing the range and behaviour of birds and other species.

The spectacular egret is a cousin of the heron, with pure white feathers making them easy to spot against the green and grey background of the Wetlands. In the breeding season they acquire a beautiful lacy plumage on back, breast and head. They are usually to be seen standing still at the water’s edge with head and neck suck into their chest, occasionally moving gracefully to stab downwards with their beak to feed on small fish.

In the late 19^th century the egret suffered appallingly for the sake of the fashion industry, which has prized egret feathers for at least 300 years. In 1914 an ounce of feathers was trading at up to 28 times the price of the same weight of silver –at today’s price, close to €1200 an ounce. Egret farms flourished with captive birds plucked four times a year, each producing about 9grams (1/3 ounce) of feathers. Wild breeding colonies were slaughtered; estimates range wildly, from 5 to 200 million killed annually.

It was in protest against this carnage in 1889 in Manchester that a society was formed, which in 1904 became the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, with Birdwatch Ireland a later offshoot.

Out of catastrophe good things can grow. Let’s enjoy the arrival of the egret.

Water Beetles

The Cabragh Wetlands Trust has three core objectives – conservation, education and recreation. The boundaries between them are not always clear, but it is not easy to think of anything more important for the next two generations, than a thorough reassessment of our attitude to place in and relationship with the natural environment.

A good place to start is by each community taking the initiative in understanding and conserving its local bio-diversity. Governments and councils can help, but at heart this is surely a community and individual responsibility. Groups like the Cabragh Wetlands Trust can protect fragile habitats and eco-systems from yet more human encroachment, and they can provide a forum for discussion, issue sharing and awareness-raising both among the already committed and those slowly coming round to the realization that things cannot go on as they are.

As proof of just what the Wetlands have to offer, a recent e-mail from a group conducting a national survey of water beetles told us that more species were found at Cabragh than at any other site in the county. Viewing water beetles may not be high on your list of priorities, but this is a clear indication of the importance of the site, and also of the purity of the water, and a reminder of what can be lost when roads and houses mushrooms across the countryside. We call these things developments, and so they are; but they are also destructive and we need to recognize that human progress can come at a terrible cost to the natural world that has taken billions of years to evolve.

We eagerly await more information of those water beetles.