A Natural Year
BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
Walking Guides
The Wicklow Way
Ireland’s Long Distance Walks
Ireland’s Waymarked Trails
Irish Waterside Walks
Ordnance Survey guide to the Wicklow Way
Ordnance Survey guide to the Western Way
Ordnance Survey guide to the Beara
Way Waterford Walks
Guides
Day Tours from Dublin
Travelogues
By Cliff and Shore
By Swerve of Shore
Walking Across Ireland
Rambling Down the Suir
Michael Fewer’s Ireland
Anthology
A Walk in Ireland
Biography
Thomas Joseph Byrne: Nation Builder
Architectural History
The New Neighbourhood of Dublin
(with Dr Maurice Craig & Joseph Hone)
Doorways of Ireland
History
The Wicklow Military Road: History and Topography
Hellfire Hill: A Human and Natural History
The Battle of the Four Courts
Children
Naturama: Open Your Eyes to the Wonders of Irish Nature
My Naturama Nature Journal
A Natural Year
The Tranquil
Rhythms and
Restorative Powers
of Irish Nature
Through the
a Seasons
MICHAEL FEWER
First published in 2020 by
Merrion Press
10 George’s Street
Newbridge
Co. Kildare
Ireland
Illustrations and photographs by Michael Fewer
© Michael Fewer, 2020
9781785373183 (Paper)
9781785373190 (Kindle)
9781785373206 (Epub)
9781785373213 (PDF)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and theabove publisher of this book.
Cover design and typesetting by River Design
Front and back cover images: © Michael Fewer and Shutterstock
For my grandson, James Michael Fewer
Acknowledgements
This little book would not have come into being
without the support and inspiration of my wife,
Teresa, the advice of Jonathan Williams, and the
enthusiasm of Conor Graham and his colleagues at Merrion Press.
CONTENTS
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Index
FOREWORD
It was in the late 1980s on the Aran Islands, when taking trainee primary-school teachers – who were there to brush up their Irish – on nature walks, that it dawned on me that this particular sort of thing was quite a useless exercise in many ways. How could these students from the east of Ireland feel any excitement at seeing the wonderful bloody cranesbill, when they had no knowledge of its more modest relation Herb Robert, a common plant found in hedges and woodlands countrywide? Or indeed expect them to be mightily impressed with sightings of choughs with their brilliant red legs and bills, when most of them didn’t know the difference between a rook and a jackdaw?
So, when I got the opportunity to present a whole series of wildlife episodes for the then enormously popular children’s programme The Den at the end of the 1990s, I made sure that the common residents of my back garden were the stars. These were five- minute weekly slots on such interesting creatures as bumblebees, bluebottles, snails, centipedes, woodlice, etc., all of whom performed splendidly once the cameras started rolling. Ladybirds obligingly fell into my upturned umbrella when I shook the leaves on the tree. Spiders – great big hunting ones – were always in my pitfall traps on inspection in the morning, or so it appeared to the viewer. And as the episodes of Creature Feature (all fifty of them) were shown on repeat for the following five years, a whole generation of younger children – not to mention university students lounging at home looking at afternoon telly in those halcyon pre-internet and laptop days – became aware of and interested in what could be found just outdoors wherever they were.
We only conserve the things we love, and we can only love the things we understand. An rud is annamh is iontach, perhaps, but not when it was once fliúrseach, as our corncrakes and breeding curlews were until relatively recently. The ability to notice things and the curiosity to ask questions are the marks of a scientist, no matter what age they are or live in. But being able to communicate so well that the viewer, listener or reader immediately wants to go and experience what is being described, this is a much rarer talent. Michael Fewer has always been curious,