A Natural Year - Michael Fewer

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or communal stocks of food, carefully preserved and stored since the previous autumn, would have dwindled week by week, and people would daily be watching for the signs that growth would soon begin again. Some organised and long- established communities had the advantages of knowledgeable priests and great astrometric megaliths to help foresee the winter solstice, but for most, it was only the barely discernible changes in the landscape around them that might herald the return of the time of plenitude and the knowledge that they would not starve. In Ireland there were no pristine crocus petals or gleaming, drooping snowdrops to signal the approach of warmer weather, because these plants were imported from Europe much later. Spring-bringers such as the delicate white blossoms of wood anemones on sheltered woodland floors would be watched for, and, near watercourses, alders would be examined to see if their purple catkins were unfolding. The first show of the mist of tiny leaves of celandine in the soil would raise communal spirits and lead to preparations for the celebration of the feast of Imbolc, the festival of spring. The earth goddess Brigit, the exalted one, would be praised and thanked, as many centuries later, her Christian persona, St Brigid, would be similarly honoured.

      For many today, those subtle signs of seasonal change go unnoticed and no longer seem to have any practical purpose. The artificial bubble that urban dwellers inhabit restricts connection with nature, for many, to their small suburban gardens, and I believe that many have grown out of the habit of ‘knowing’ nature. Those who work or spend leisure time in our countryside or on the hills are amongst the fortunate ones who can still be full observers, or even participants, in that wonderful transition of winter into spring. As the winds and rains and darkness of winter recede, it is a time of year that can be particularly magical for those who have the opportunity to experience it at first hand.

      Kilcop, 9 February

      When February arrives and the darkest days of winter are fading, Teresa and I feel a need to visit our cottage at Kilcop, which we usually close up for the winter around the beginning of November. Nearby Woodstown strand is a most peaceful place at this time of the year – the beach and seascape still and sombre, the only sounds the plaintive cries of seabirds and waders with a backing of tiny waves shuffling carpets of cockle shells. It usually takes me forty minutes to walk the beach without a halt, but today I found myself stopping frequently to watch and wonder at the great flocks of brent geese and oystercatchers quartering the mud flats. The coast of west Wexford across the harbour and Creadan Head extending out towards it from the Waterford side, were visible, barely, through a curtain of haze. Ink- black cormorants, wings outstretched to dry after a morning’s fishing, were perched on the gaunt, black poles of an ancient weir which stretches out into the tide. The sun strained to burst through the overcast and it cast a silver light on the bay, which appeared as a series of silver and grey slices, forming a backdrop to the flights of brent geese coming and going.

      A dog darted away from its owners walking the beach, and created havoc as it splashed out towards the assembled flocks of gulls and waders grazing the mudflats. There was an explosion of pumping wings as varieties of gulls jostled into the air with an assortment of oystercatchers, wimbrels and geese, in the midst of which, looking incongruous, there was a lumbering grey-backed crow.

      When the sky is clear, the early setting sun washes the vast expanse of Woodstown bay in a special light, reflecting off the ancient cliffs of Wexford across the way, and picking up, like tiny pinpoints, whitewashed houses scattered along the low-lying landmass. Every evening the great host of rooks that have their tree-top city in the beech trees that line the grounds of Ballyglan House launch themselves from their branches in a noisy celebration, wheeling and diving and chasing, and filling the air with a cacophony of caws.

      Teresa and I had a memorable rook-related wildlife experience after a walk on Woodstown beach at dusk one evening. Creadan Head extends a couple of miles out into Waterford Harbour, and we saw a myriad of rooks gather over its northern shore, a host of black dots, and as we watched they began to stream towards us in a long line. As the flying circus of birds neared the beach on which we stood, many of them dived and skimmed across the water offshore, inches from the surface. Their calls filled the air as they swooped up fifty feet or more and headed for the abundant tall beech trees in the Ballyglan demesne. Even as the first ragged black birds wheeled and turned into the trees, the following line of birds still stretched back across to Creadan, where a circling mass of them awaited their turn in the convoy. It was an amazing sight, and we stood transfixed for about twenty minutes as the movement took place, until all the birds, with the exception of a few stragglers, lined the branches of all the leafless trees in Ballyglan, continuing their chorus of caws.

      Rooks are plentiful throughout Ireland. All the better to perform the task that nature designed them for, ridding the landscape of carrion, parasites and unwanted debris of all kinds.

      Kilcop, 11 February

      Looking out the kitchen window today, I was surprised at how far I could see down the garden through the sparse winter foliage. I could see trees and bushes that are hidden from the window at any other month of the year. As I looked, I saw, in the midst of the grey matrix of branches, a puzzling splash of gold. I had to go out and down into the garden to find out what it was. About fifteen years ago Teresa’s sister gave us a gift of a very small hazel, a tree that long ago got lost in the burgeoning shrubs and trees along the east side of the garden. It was this hazel, or more accurately, its catkins, that had caught my attention. Prompted by the sunshine of the last couple of days, the little overshadowed tree had proudly put forth its version of flowers in the form of long golden catkins, called, in some country areas, ‘lamb’s tails’; I think probably the first time it had produced them. In common with a number of other species of tree, the hazel is mainly pollinated by wind: when the time is right, these catkins will release clouds of yellow pollen, seeking the tiny carmine stigmas, female flowers, protruding from buds on the same or a nearby tree. The pollinated flowers develop eventually into hazelnuts with woody shells, protected by bristly bracts.

      Hazel was one of the first trees to spread through Ireland after the last glacial period. Some experts believe that parts of the south of Ireland were not covered by the ice sheet and existed as an area of tundra during this time. It is possible that some hazel grew in sheltered parts of that tundra, and as the ice sheet retreated north, these hazels spread north after it. In places like the limestone-rich Burren in County Clare, hazel thrives in scrubland, and individual trees can reach heights of six metres. Largely forgotten today, in the past it was one of our most important trees. Its nuts were an important food source when man arrived in Ireland, and copious amounts of shells have frequently been found in archaeological excavations of Neolithic sites. Hazel trees were coppiced from earliest times to produce rods for making coracles, cradles, fencing and traditional baskets of every sort. Hazel rods were also used in the wattle and daub walls of houses in the early towns of Ireland, and water diviners often use forked hazel twigs. And we must not forget that St Patrick is said to have used a hazel rod to drive the snakes out of Ireland!

      Kilcop, 12 February

      A number of my coppiced ash trees are mature enough to harvest, and I have spent today felling them. Coppicing is a system of obtaining a regular harvest of wood; it involves felling a tree, ideally an ash, and leaving a stump about 900mm high. The mass of roots under the ground will continue to feed the stump, and so, when the growing season comes around again, the tree will put out new shoots. The ash tree produces very vigorous growth, the shoots getting up to more than a metre high in the first year. I reduce these to half a dozen shoots, allowing all the growth from the original stump to flow into the selected shoots, and after about seven years they have become a cluster of young saplings, each with a diameter of 100–125mm, ready for easy harvesting. In winter and early spring, before the sap rises, these saplings are easily felled, without having to deal with great amounts of leaves, and the process begins all over again. Today’s harvest is my third here, and will provide this winter’s fuel for our stoves in Kilcop and Dublin. Little coppicing is carried out today, but a careful examination of old hedges in the countryside will often reveal old, long-abandoned coppiced ash trees; they look like a half-dozen mature trees growing from the same base.

      I also spent some time today working on our hedges. Bare of foliage at this time of year, individual hawthorn branches can be seen, and it is possible to access and lay some of the bushes. Laying a hedge

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