Rarities at Cabragh

Since Cabragh Wetlands Trust began managing their original 14 acres of the marsh in the early 1990’s, there have been many unusual feathered visitors to the area. Birds like the barn owl, lapwing and lark feed and breed in the vicinity. These are scarce but not as uncommon as a bird like the bittern, which is very rare on these islands. There was some excitement ten years or more ago when word went out that one had been sighted in the reed bed next to the hide. It has not bred in Ireland since the nineteenth century due to the drainage of its natural habitat, like marshes. It is a secretive bird that inhabits big reed beds. Its plumage is golden brown, streaked with dark brown and yellow and is known as An Bonnán Buí in Irish.

In former times it bred in all four provinces and was prized by the gentry for its meat. The simple country folk would have nothing to do with the bittern, because its weird booming call was a “portent of some sad event”. It inspired writers and poets. The famous Irish poem ‘An Bonnan Bui’ by Cathal Bui Mac Ghiolla Ghunna refers to ‘the yellow Bittern’ that had died of thirst in frosty weather. The poet himself feared the same fate for want of a drop!

A more frequent visitor to the wetlands has been the Marsh Harrier. Individuals, usually females, have visited the reed beds three or four times in the last decade. The beautiful bird has a 4 foot wingspan. Its golden head and front wing edges contrast with its dark brown plumage. It has been seen gliding slowly over the tops of the reeds, then hovering slightly before it pounced on its prey - usually aquatic birds or small mammals. This bird, like the bittern, has specific habitat requirements. With the drainage of Wetlands in the 19th century, the bird’s fate was sealed. They no longer breed here.

Other rare or scarce duck species, geese and swans have been sighted at Cabragh. These include a skua, american teal, a white footed goose (eastern race) and a Bewick’s swan. The latter had a numbered neck collar, which allowed it to be traced across Europe as it returned to its breeding grounds in Siberia. Even rare and endangered species seem to view Cabragh Wetlands as a place with potential! “An rud is annamh is iontach.”

Grow your own food!

In this week’s Sunday Times, Mark Keenan in his Plot 34 column makes telling arguments about the decline of the Irish food-producing industry, with ever-increasing reliance on imported food, the security of which can hardly be taken for granted in the troubled world of today. Climate change, oil crises, financial collapse, supermarket domination and the vicissitudes of world markets all contribute to a very uncertain supply chain for our food, and thus for our very survival. Keenan argues that for the first time in 500 generations, the knowledge of how to grow our own food is not being systematically passed down by adults to children, and that most children are not growing up watching and learning as their dad or granddad works the soil, plants seeds and produces food for the family table.



We all bemoan the rain and lack of real heat in our weather, but we have the most wonderful climate for growing and it is surely a nonsense that farmers, whose industry is more important than any, are being forced out of business, in part because of the low prices they receive. The connection to nature is not being adequately made in our children’s daily lives, and schools will struggle to fill the gap if there is such a strong cultural negation of the importance of the natural world, of our agricultural heritage and of horticultural knowledge and skills. These are things of such overwhelming importance that they should be part of our folk-memory, of our indigenous wisdom, transmitted from generation to generation as part of our daily lives. Without them, we become dependent on others, dependent on chance, helpless in adversity and unable to provide sustenance for our families.



A recent report said that to continue in our current lifestyles, the planet will have to produce as much food in the next fifty years as it has in the last 10,000. Can we even begin to manage such a task unless we all take more responsibility for growing our own? And that means understanding the soil and maintaining its health and productivity.



Cabragh Wetlands Trust is of course doing its bit to get children (and adult visitors) to think more deeply about such issues and to foster better understanding of both our local habitats and global environmental issues. As a new development we are working with our friends at Pallas Hill Open Farm at the Ragg, a family farm with a variety of animals for visitors to see, plus information on wildlife, and a museum and display of horse-drawn machinery, which helps us to understand our farming heritage and the central role of agriculture and food production in the lives of all our ancestors until perhaps the last two generations. We are hoping that some schools might like to spend a full day in the area, perhaps spending the morning at Cabragh and the afternoon at Pallas Hill. This would make a great day out of the classroom, and we hope some schools from further away might make the journey for a field study outing in the beautiful countryside of North Tipp. Contact either Ella at Pallas Hill (0504-54294) or Michael at Cabragh (0504-43879).

Tidy Towns!

It was very pleasing to read in last week’s Star about the success of Holycross in the Tidy Towns Competition. Sited on the fringes of Holycross Parish, Cabragh Wetlands Trust was delighted to hear of the well-earned success of our friends on the local Tidy Towns committee. Not surprisingly there is some overlap in the membership of the two organizations, and like any small community, the hard voluntary effort of busy men and women is absolutely priceless.

Readers of this column will remember our concerns about too much emphasis on tidiness, which can so often be destructive of habitat and biodiversity, so it was very good to see that the adjudicators placed great emphasis on wildlife and natural amenities, with plenty of practical suggestions about landscaping and preservation of natural habitats along the river frontage, and a strong comment about planting native species that will enhance the food chain. These are tips that we can all apply in our own gardens.

Think carefully though before you act on one piece of advice from the adjudicators: “Do remove the two dead trees”. In the case of Holycross’s river frontage, this is no doubt very sound advice, and if dead trees are unsafe then they will have to come down, but cutting them down and “removing” them are very different. So pause for a moment before you swing the axe or start up the chainsaw. Dead trees are a vital part of many ecosystems, and a key player in the development of our natural heritage. A dead tree left to decay naturally on the ground can be a wonderful source of wildlife, providing shelter for small mammals, a home for countless insects, and a superb environment for new plants to grow. As the tree breaks down over the years, so it will enrich the soil into which it is decaying, becoming a wonderfully rich medium in which new life can flourish.

Out of death new life springs. It has always been thus. The death of trees and other plants has largely created the life in our landscape, determining a specific local chemical balance which influences which species will flourish in the area. Soil is dead plants; death creates life. Dead trees created our heritage.

So perhaps those two trees have to come down, but may be they could be left in a quiet corner as a log pile in which hedgehogs can shelter, beetles and a myriad of other insects flourish, fungi grow, birds feed, small mammals hunt. Worms will turn the logs into good soil, badgers will root and life will go on. And children will come and turn over the logs, see new sights and learn about the non-human creatures with whom we share this extraordinary planet. And perhaps, if we are lucky, they will grow up to mange it better than we have done.

Spiders and thank you!

At this time of year the early morning dew soaks the grass, and water droplets gather beneath leaves, flowers and stems. Everywhere in the hedges and garden, and across the landscape here at Cabragh Wetlands, can be seen the lacy, fairy-like gossamer threads of spiders’ webs standing out clearly in the morning sun, dew-laden. It is a spectacular sight, and the work of countless tiny spiders which swarm in the fields in the autumn. The young spiders are too small to eat solid food, and depend on the dew drops in the webs and on leaves for survival. They will cling together for warmth, forming pill-sized ‘spider-balls’ which are dotted around the fields in early autumn. They soon separate and look for a likely spot to spin their own tiny webs and catch insects, and before you know it, the air is full of invisible threads.

In early autumn spiders’ webs of all shapes and sizes appear on every hedgerow, drift across long stalks of grass, and sway gently in the breeze from furze bushes, brambles, flower stems, reed beds and every other suitable attachment they can find. You will not have to wander far to find examples of these dangerous little death-traps. There are hundreds of different species of spider, and no two make their web exactly alike. Just as on the Aran Islands each family developed its own unique knitting stitch as a kind of personal identification, so every spider family has its own special pattern for weaving its insect trap, and every young spider spins its little web in exactly the same way as its mother, without receiving a single lesson.

Some weave a mass of tangled threads, others weave their webs very closely. Some construct cobwebby funnels, while others (orb weavers) spin beautiful, regular, open webs (like wheels), with numerous spokes radiating from the centre. The garden spider attaches non-sticky tension lines to nearby sturdy plants and then spirals to form the net of her web. She replaces the outer spirals with gummed silk and oil on her own feet prevents her becoming stuck.

Once caught in the web, an insect seldom escapes, and the more it struggles the more it gets entangled in the silken threads, which are coated with a kind of sticky glue. The spider spends most of her time in her den, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Trapped insects are injected with enzymes to liquidize their tissue, and the spider swallows the liquid. As you look at the early morning webs covered in dew drops and sparkling like jewels in the sun, remember that it is not a good time for the spiders; their snares can too easily be seen because of the dewy fringe, so some spiders will try to shake off the drops to render the web invisible again, and allow them to become efficient killing fields again.

Here at Cabragh we also have the scarily named wolf spider, who does not spin a web, but hunts his victims down. The female builds a nursery web, in which her egg sac is placed.

Arachnophobes beware! Winter will be a hard time for spiders; their favourite victims, flies, have long since gone, and those spiders which survive will seek out a nice warm corner where they can tuck themselves away and pass the time safely to see another spring.

A reminder that the Wetlands Trust is inviting all those who helped organise our recent Open Day (prize-donors too) to a thank-you evening at the Centre on Tuesday next – September 29th at 8.00pm.

Tea and thank you to all!

Cabragh Wetlands Trust is quite justifiably unknown for its economic predictions, but we anticipate bad news in the coming months for the Irish tea drinker.
There have been severe droughts in the Kenyan highlands, and a consequent collapse of around 50% in tea production. Perhaps our money-driven world takes too much account of the laws of supply and demand, but it seems inevitable that this will be reflected in a price rise for the tea that we buy in our local shops. Ireland leads the world in per capita tea consumption, drinking more cups per day per person than any other country. While we support purchase of locally sourced food, tea is not something we can grow here, so we are at the mercy of international trade, and international weather.


Everything is linked. In Kenya a hundred years ago the realization of the wealth to be created by growing tea and coffee led to a rush to clear ground to plant tea bushes. As demand and profits grew, so did the ambitions of the planters. Hundreds of thousands of hectares were cleared and plantations spread into the hills, where ancient trees had multiplied into vast forests acting as giant sponges, soaking up excess water in the rainy season, and slowly drip-feeding it back out in the drier times, creating a self-sustaining balance of trees, plants, insects and animals perfectly adapted to their local habitat.


Deforestation has undermined that balance, perhaps with far greater damage in other parts of the world like the Amazon basin and Indonesia. Now in Kenya when there is heavy rain there are not enough trees to soak up the excess; water runs off the hills too quickly, destroying precious topsoil and in some years causing devastating floods. In periods of drought there is insufficient water trapped in the depleted forests to sustain the volume demanded by users, both farmers and wildlife. The natural balance has once again been lost. It is hardly a new lesson; the dust-bowls in the American mid-West were a major element in turning the 1929 Wall Street Crash into a global economic depression. There is scope for young historians to build a career writing eco-history, reassessing man's impact on the environment rather than the narrow focus of man's interaction with man.


Talking of conserving local habitat, many thanks to those who helped with the Cabragh Wetlands Open Day at the end of August. An invaluable contribution has been made to our bank balance, thanks to the generosity and goodwill of those who helped by donating prizes, setting up shelters, giving of their time on the day, displaying their skills and crafts, and so much more. There was a wonderful sense of community and cooperation. As a small recompense, the Wetlands Trust is inviting all contributors to a thankyou evening on Tuesday 22nd September. More details will be circulated next week.

Insects

My recently purchased insect book tells me that so far scientists have identified 360,000 species of beetle, 180,000 of moths and butterflies, 120,000 distinct species of flies, 82,000 ‘true bugs’, 20,000 grasshoppers, 5,000 dragonflies, and so on. At Cabragh we are very proud of two species of exceptionally rare caddisflies that have survived the ravages of time and human encroachment in the pure waters of the Wetlands, but even that pride is tempered by reading that no less than 11,000 species of caddisflies have been identified worldwide. The range and beauty of life is utterly extraordinary, and perhaps most extraordinary of all is the arrogance of humans who assume that our one species is above everything else and is somehow entitled to do whatever it likes with the other beings that share our planet.A quick bit of maths confirms upwards of 750,000 distinct varieties of those common insects listed above, with some naturalists suggesting that the true figure is double that. Another book tells me that there is more life below the surface of the earth, living in the ground, than there is above, including plants birds and animals, as well as insects. Heaven knows where aquatic creatures fit into all of this. Apart from wonder and awe, it is surely humility that should fill us, as we slowly edge towards a clearer understanding of our true place in the natural world. Reason a little further, and surely the conclusion has to be that we have a moral obligation to protect biodiversity and control the growth of human society, both in terms of the numbers of people and their material impact on the resources of the earth. This means a very thorough and basic reconsideration of the core concepts that have underpinned the ‘development’ of human history over the very short period of a few thousand years since our ancestors were hunter-gatherers just two hundred or so generations ago.At Cabragh we are trying to conserve a very special piece of wetland, and the goodwill and generosity of the volunteers and sponsors of our recent Open Day was very heart-warming. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that thinking people really do care about the natural world. We welcomed ten new members into our group, and hope that many more will stop by to sign up or renew their membership in support of our core values of conservation, education and recreation. Look out for those little creatures in your garden; most of them will do you no harm. If you have a healthy range of different species sharing your land with you, it is pretty clear evidence that you are doing a good job in protecting nature on your doorstep, and ultimately that’s perhaps the best thing most of us can hope to do in our lifetime.

Heritage

The deaths in July of two very old men can hardly be a surprise, and scarcely a cause for mourning outside their immediate families. We all have out span of years, which will eventually run out, and ultimately face the same fate as every other human and non-human that has ever lived. Death is as normal and inevitable as breathing and sleeping. But the two old men in question are worth a few moments of our time, because they were the very last of the many millions who fought in the trenches of the First World War, a war that shaped the course of the twentieth century and touches the lives of all of us today. Most families have their memories of men who went to the war, many never to return.

Henry Allingham died first. At 113 he was the oldest man in the world, the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland, the last founder member of the RAF and the last-but-one to have fought in the trenches of the Western Front. Harry Patch, a stripling of 111, died a week later, and with him went the final direct connection to the abattoir of trench warfare – the only man alive of the ten million or more who were sent to the trenches. His best friends were killed next to him in the muddy bloodbath of Passchendaele near Ypres in 1917. In the stoical way of that generation neither of them said much about the war until the last years of their lives, when they became public figures, speaking out against the madness of warfare, visiting schools and giving direct witness to children about the terrible things they had experienced so many years ago.

But is it really so long ago? This modern world dominated by fashion, youth and the constant demand for renewal of material goods, tends to dismiss anything more than a few years old as out of date, out of touch and ‘unsophisticated’. An old person’s youth and memories are patronisingly cast aside as belonging to another age. The experience of ordinary people is condescendingly dismissed as our celebrity culture focuses its history teaching on the famous, powerful and heroic. Myths of nation building squeeze out the ordinary, mundane lives of ordinary, mundane people like the overwhelming majority of our ancestors.

Our heritage is far more likely to be found in the memories of old men and women than in the sassy razzmatazz of the slick media that infiltrates into so many corners of our lives today. Talk to the old folk around you, get the children to do school projects that will keep alive the experience, knowledge and insight of the elderly. Nearly all of us will be very old one day, and we will want to be treated as valued resources, reservoirs of knowledge and respected for what we have achieved. It is so easy to lose touch with our family’s past; the oral tradition that passes on community history has disappeared from the so-called developed world.

The past is much closer to us than we realise. Henry Allingham 1896-2009 (his father died in 1897!): as a young man he will certainly have known people who lived through the horrors of the famines of the 1840’s. As a baby he will have met old people who were alive during the Napoleonic Wars, perhaps even met someone who witnessed the 1798 rising. Follow the same argument back another two generations and we are into the era of Cromwell. Four generations from direct memories of Cromwell. Our heritage is closer and more real than we think. By and large we are what we are because of the interplay between our environment and our ancestors. Just as we at Cabragh Wetlands are trying to conserve our natural heritage, so we should all do our bit to remember and preserve our human heritage.