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.

Cabragh Wetlands Trust New Logo

Here is the first public showing of the Cabragh Wetlands Trust’s new logo, which we hope will soon be a common sight in North Tipp, on t-shirts and ties, as well as on educational and publicity material, as the work of the Centre grows.

The bird in silhouette is the snipe, familiar to anyone who has ever travelled through marshy ground. 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. During the breeding season the perched male makes a ‘chucka-chucka’ call, and in flight it will dive at a 45 degree angle, using its outer tail feathers to produce a sound like a kid goat; hence it is often called the ‘gabhairin’ ‘or littler goat.’ 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.

What better place to listen for a drumming gabhairin than at the Cabragh Wetlands.