John Horton, warden of the Cape Clear Bird Observatory, describes how he spent much of the winter months of 2025/26 volunteering his expertise in the Karoo region of South Africa.

The culmination of two years’ work, in 2018, I successfully led an ambitious project to establish the first newly-accredited bird observatory for Britain and Ireland in decades on Alderney. This application is now used by the Bird Observatories Council (BOC) as the template for any other location aspiring to become one of these centres of ornithological excellence. Not a complete surprise then that I was tracked down by the owner of an extensive lodge and nature reserve in Africa with one question, “could you do it for us?”.

So, into the unknown, with an awful lot of boxes to tick, not least the marrying up of South African bird recording systems, getting all relevant authorities and organisations on board, and the promise of a fair bit of red tape in terms of permissions and permits ahead. I understandably did not overplay the chances of ending ten weeks in South Africa with a completed comprehensive framework document launching a Karoo Bird Observatory, but with no little effort and a ‘can-do’ attitude, alongside some fairly unorthodox bumps in the road, that is exactly what happened. 

However, there were one or two considerations that you won’t encounter at an Irish bird observatory, definitely more Puff Adders and Cape Cobras and, when out completing survey work monitoring bird migration, be aware of hippos and African Buffalos, which all made for a rather more comprehensive health and safety assessment.

Setbacks were sometimes challenging, for example, whilst FEDEX appears to be the only freight operator in South Africa, they clearly face serious issues. A shipment of bird ringing equipment worth over €2,000, travelling to the Karoo from Poland, made it as far as Northern Cape (known for being South Africa’s safest province), at which point I received an email from FEDEX stating “We are very sorry to tell you that there will be a delay in the delivery of your package, our delivery van has been hijacked”. Whilst some of us might find such news shocking or even alarming, the local attitude was rather more relaxed and inclined to some shoulder shrugging about it.

It transpired that the New Holme Nature Lodge and reserve is one of the most important stopover locations for over-wintering sub-Saharan migrant birds in Southern Africa. Fast declining species familiar to our Irish gardens and nature reserves including Barn Swallows, Willow Warblers, Spotted Flycatchers, and Common Swifts overwinter in numbers at this birding hotspot of several thousand acres. 

Moreover, my input exposed that an extraordinary 75 per cent of all Western Palearctic inter-continental migrant bird species ever recorded in South Africa have been spotted at this one site, strongly justifying the location as ideal for establishing a bird observatory. Add that it also has an excellent range of accommodation for guests and a dedicated research centre building. 

Keen interest and support from stakeholders Birdlife South Africa, the African bird ringing scheme SAFRING, and donations from WorthWild Africa also greatly assisted with progress. The recording systems were incorporated into the dedicated national database SABMAP, daily bird census routes were identified and mapped out, lodge staff tasked with various activities and, slowly, but surely, the impossible looked like it could actually happen. 

Whilst in situ, I also implemented moth trapping surveys, an area that has received very little effort in the Karoo. Attention was given to habitat management, minimising disturbance to birds in key areas and generally recording everything that runs, crawls, jumps, flies, swims, or slithers. Beyond this location being a spectacular oasis for almost 300 bird species, it is one of if not the best, location in South Africa to see rare mammal species such as the Black-footed cat, Aardvark, and Elephant Shrew. Reserve owner PC Ferriera is to be commended for his ongoing efforts in turning over thousands of acres of his family’s traditional farmland to wildlife, whilst beyond his property borders there is little consideration for the natural world or environment.

Whilst representing BirdWatch Ireland at the Global Bird Fair this summer, I announced during a presentation that in support of this concerted effort in Africa to help protect and research birdlife, BirdWatch Ireland have agreed to work towards ‘twinning’ Cape Clear Bird observatory with The Khoisan Karoo Bird Observatory, continuing to offer advice and support where possible. 

In conclusion, the Karoo Bird Observatory is up and running, and it is exciting that other important locations for bird migration in South Africa have touched base with this project, keen to understand how they might begin working towards setting up the same. This could lead to a much-needed network of African observatories interacting and producing front-line data that may help us to understand, and even stem, the decline of so many of our long haul migratory species.

BirdWatch Ireland
West Cork Branch News

Our next events are:

September 20:
Cape Clear (Members only.)

October 11:
Migrants at Mizen Head.

Visit our website www.birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie for more information about these events. To receive news and reminders about our events join our mailing list by sending an email to mailinglist@birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie.

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The name weever comes from the Old French word ‘wivre’, meaning viper. There are nine species, all but one live in the Atlantic; only two are found around these islands – the greater and lesser. It is the latter that bathers sometimes tread on. It is a small fish, mottled brown in colour, which grows to about 14 cm. The greater weever, up to 40 cm long, is more handsome, with blue, black and yellow markings. It can sting too, but it is less common inshore and is mostly a problem for fishermen. It is of no commercial value here, but much prized in France where it is an ingredient in bouillabaisse.

There are many dangerous fish in the sea, from man-eating sharks to man-stabbing garfish. An angler was badly bitten by a blue shark a few weeks ago off the Waterford coast, but then the shark didn’t ask to be hauled aboard his boat. There are other deadly marine animals, such as box jellyfish and blue-ringed octopuses, but fortunately none live around here. However, the oceans are warming up, and while heatwaves and wildfires are warning signs on land, the bleaching of coral reefs, the decline of kelp forests and the movement of marine creatures from tropical seas into more temperate waters are all further proof of climate change. In Courtmacsherry last summer, a moray eel was caught in a lobster pot. A flying fish turned up on a nearby beach last month. Local fishermen tell me that they are now catching the common octopus, a southern species, usually not as common here as the lesser octopus. Lobster fishermen in the south of England are losing their valuable crustaceans to this octopus invasion. Several species of squid are being captured in the North Sea where they were never found before.

About 1,000 species of sea creatures have migrated into the Mediterranean from the Red Sea via the Suez Canal since it was opened in 1869. But more species of fish have made the journey in the last twenty years than in the entire 20th century. Some of these new arrivals are fish we definitely do not want here.

One such invader is the lionfish. There are five species, all native to the Indo-Pacific. They belong to the family Scorpaenidae, which also includes scorpionfish, redfish and Norway haddock, which can all be caught in our waters, and the deadly stonefish, which thankfully can’t. Lionfish are very attractive, striped in black, brown and red, with fan-like pectoral fins, long, separated dorsal fin rays and 18 venomous spines. A sting from a lionfish can cause severe pain, vomiting and breathing difficulties, and is occasionally fatal.

The common lionfish was first recorded in the Mediterranean in 1991. As well as being venomous, they are also gluttonous, eating vast numbers of commercial fish, and as they have no natural predators in the Mediterranean, and their females can lay over 30,000 eggs at a time, they are quickly taking over the territories and prey on indigenous fish. They are, however, good to eat and are starting to appear in Greek restaurants.

On the other side of the Atlantic, red lionfish have become a serious problem, the result of aquarists releasing them into the sea once they have discovered how difficult they are to keep – they eat everything else in the tank.

Even worse are puffer fish. There are about 200 species, in the family Tetraodontidae (part of the order Tetraodontiformes). They all puff themselves into ball shapes by sucking in water, to confuse predators, and all have large, incisor-like teeth. Their livers, gonads and skin contain tetrodotoxin, a deadly neurotoxin that causes heart and respiratory failure.

Two species, the diamondback puffer and the silver-cheeked toadfish, again both from the Indo-Pacific region, have invaded the Mediterranean and Atlantic. The former has been in the Med since the 1930s and remains restricted to the eastern part, but the silver-cheeked one which only arrived recently – it was first recorded off Greece in 2005 – has spread as far as the Straits of Gibraltar and south to Cape Verde. They are a menace to fishermen: their teeth are so strong they can bite off a finger, destroy nets and damage other more valuable fish in the nets, and, like the lionfish, they have no predators in their new habitats.

It is illegal to sell puffer fish in the EU, but in Japan, they are a delicacy. The Japanese enjoy what we would consider strange things, such as natto – fermented soy beans covered in slimy bacteria, and mochi – glutinous rice cakes that choke a few people to death every Japanese New Year. Puffer fish, fugu in Japanese, has to be prepared by specially trained chefs. Traditionally, if a chef lost a customer through fugu poisoning, he would have to kill himself. The ultimate gustatory experience when eating fugu is to get a slight tingling in the lips from the minutest quantity of tetrodotoxin.

The order Tetraodontiformes contains many strange fish. As well as the puffers, there are trigger fish, porcupine fish, cow fish and box fish. Trigger fish are so called because of the strong spine at the front of their dorsal fin that, when raised, locks into position so the fish can jam itself into a crevice and can’t be pulled out by a predator. Many are brightly coloured, such as the Picasso trigger fish, a bizarre creature with a long face and a body striped so madly in black, blue and yellow, it could have been designed by an eccentric artist. It has a wonderful name in Hawaiian Polynesian – humuhumunukunukuapua’a. One species of trigger fish appears in Irish waters occasionally in the summer months, but it is a dull greyish-brown fish – there is an example of this, stuffed, on the wall of the Anchor Bar in Courtmacsherry.

The sunfish, the largest of all  bony fish, are also in this order. The ocean sunfish looks like a giant head without a body. It is occasionally sighted here, swimming slowly at the surface, tall dorsal fin flapping, like a drunken shark. Most of our sunfish are small, but the species can reach a weight of 1,000 kg. The southern sunfish is even bigger: one found dead off the Azores in 2021 was 11 feet long and weighed over 2,700 kg. Neither triggerfish or sunfish are dangerous, though the former can give a nasty bite. 

Climate change will bring us new species, good and bad, but it might mean we lose others. Some planktonic crustaceans on which much of our marine fauna depend will move north, so will cold water fish such as cod. Of course, many people still don’t accept the whole idea of climate change. I was talking about this in the pub the other day with the crew of a large yacht. They insisted that global warming was not caused by humans, but was natural. They also said that world population was actually decreasing. Funny that, I replied – when I was born, there were about 3,500,000,000 people on the planet; now there are over 8,000,000,000. I hadn’t encountered such ignorance, delivered so vehemently, since I attempted to teach biological evolution to Born Again Christians in Zambia. People like that can’t accept that humans are ruining the planet, because to do so, they would have to think about their own excessively luxurious lifestyle.

There has always been natural climate change, but it happens slowly, over thousands of years, giving animals time to move to warmer or cooler places, grow or lose hair, learn to eat new prey. Man-made climate change, the result of almost everything that modern man does, is happening too quickly for animals to adapt. But those in charge, politicians, either don’t understand or don’t care. They only want ‘growth’, i.e. more cars, more houses, more industries, more people, which will all make things worse. Unless we go backwards, the environment will continue to suffer, and who in this rich, greedy society is ever going to return to a simpler, more environmentally-friendly way of life? And what will it take to get a government to make us do so? An invasion of lionfish near a TD’s favourite beach, perhaps.

This month Andrea Reichstein, from the Save Murragh Action Group – a group dedicated to protecting the Bandon river valley – highlights the rare gem of ancient oaks found in Bandon woods.

Bandon town, nestled into the beautiful Bandon River Valley has something very special right on its doorstep: probably some of the oldest and rarest oaks in Ireland. These are within a (possibly) ancient woodland forming part of the Castlebernard Demesne and they might even be a survivor of times when Ireland was still covered in woods.

But why are they referred to as ‘possibly’ ancient? This assessment is based on a desk-based survey on County Cork’s woodlands conducted as part of a report for the Heritage Council in 2010. The report consulted old maps to verify how long an area has been wooded. Castlebernard Woods appears on maps dating from around 1830. However, there is insufficient evidence to establish that the woods existed before 1660, a significant date as much of Ireland was surveyed during the Civil Survey and the Down Survey.

So, as Bandon was either not properly surveyed back then, or no convincing records could be found, it is listed as PAW (possibly ancient woodland).

Some PAWs got surveyed as part of the 2010 report, however, not Castlebernard.

Considering the impressive collection of massive oaks which, together with other woodland plants, indicate it being long-established, it is very likely an ancient woodland (AW).

However, while it may not yet be fully established that the woods themselves are ancient, some of the oaks within them are certainly ancient trees. An oak is generally considered ancient once it reaches 400 years of age, although this varies between species depending on factors such as growth rate. A fast-growing birch, for example, is considered ancient at around 150 years, while a yew needs to reach approximately 800 years.

But the woods are not the only habitat of note that the people of Bandon are fortunate to have. On the way to the park, which forms part of the Castlebernard demesne, one would cross what remains of the bog, an area of historic flood fields that, particularly during winter, once provided habitat for curlew, lapwing and, until recently, snipe. All three are red-listed birds, suffering significant declines as a result of habitat loss and deterioration, making the protection and restoration of suitable habitat a priority.

Unfortunately, part of the bog was built on some time ago and, more recently, the remaining bog has been drained.

This is happening at a time when the importance and value of protecting the floodplains and bogs we have left has never been greater – not only for flood protection, but also for carbon storage, river health and biodiversity.

The Bandon River, the bog and the possible ancient woodland form a unique, connected habitat of immense and irreplaceable value.

The bog and the woods help to hold water during periods of heavy rainfall. Together with the river, they provide habitat for species such as otter and kingfisher. The trees along the river help to stabilise its banks, reducing erosion, while their shade helps regulate water temperature, limiting excessive algae growth and helping to maintain conditions suitable for salmon and freshwater pearl mussel.

The latter was found in abundance along this stretch of river almost 50 years ago. Given that freshwater pearl mussels can live for more than 100 years, there is a possibility that some may still be present.

The area urgently needs to be properly surveyed.

But back to the woods.

I was lucky enough to get a tour of the bog and the park with Dan Holland from the ‘This is Bandon’ Facebook group, his partner Deirdre and Robert from BEAG.

Although I have lived in the area for more than 10 years, I had no idea what an extraordinary place this is.

The feeling of being in the presence of majestic ancient oak trees is difficult to describe. There is something humbling about seeing trees that have stood for hundreds of years, connected through an underground network of fungi, supporting each other and providing a home for thousands of woodland species.

Owls, woodpeckers, bats and squirrels all make use of the trees, nesting in the softer deadwood and cavities created as the wood decays. Some bats and small birds also roost or nest in the thick bark and its many creases and grooves. The acorns provide food for badgers, mice and birds such as jays, which bury surplus acorns for later. The oak flowers provide food for squirrels, insects and caterpillars of moths and butterflies, while the leaves also support countless caterpillars.

And then there are the fungi. One species, the extremely rare oak polypore, feeds only on the decaying heartwood – the inner part of the tree trunk – of oaks that are at least 250-years-old.

Altogether, more than 300 species are thought to depend solely on oak trees.

Some of these species are butterflies, many of which are so highly specialised to a particular tree that they cannot survive without it. The caterpillar of the purple hairstreak butterfly, for example, depends on the leaves and flower buds of oak. The striking adults are rarely seen because they spend most of their time high in the oak canopy. However, they have been identified in Castlebernard.

These trees are truly special. It is difficult not to be deeply moved and inspired by their presence, and to wonder what they have seen over the centuries, what they have lived through and what they may yet witness in the future.

Will they still be standing when we are gone? Will they continue to support their offspring – the young oak saplings patiently waiting for their opportunity to grow, reach the canopy and eventually become so-called mother trees themselves?

While the woods are within the proposed National Heritage Area, “Bandon Valley West of Bandon”, the bog lies outside its boundaries and therefore has little protection.

Even though the site synopsis states that the Bandon River (above Bandon) “floods occasionally in winter and at such times attracts birds such as Lapwing and Curlew as well as Mallard and Teal”, the pNHA is carefully mapped around the extent of the woods and along the old and new river channels, completely avoiding the bog and other flood fields.

To give the ancient oaks greater protection, an application for a Tree Preservation Order was submitted to Cork County Council for an area of Castlebernard Wood, or the park, containing a significant number of ancient and veteran oaks.

If successful, the order would provide this area of woodland with additional protection.

Keep an eye out on This is Bandon, Bandon Tidy Towns and Bandon Environmental Action Group’s social media channels for updates on the process and information on how you can help protect those ancient oaks and their forest.

By Nicholas Mitchell

If you visit one of West Cork’s estuaries during July and August, you may notice something puzzling. Two Black-tailed Godwits standing side by side can look remarkably different, even though they belong to the same subspecies, ‘Limosa limosa icelandica’, which breeds in Iceland.

I photographed the two birds in the first photograph on Rosscarbery estuary in early July. One has a bright orange bill and rich chestnut breeding plumage, while the other is much duller with a pink bill and patchy grey feathers. So why the difference?

The plumage of the bird on the left indicates that it almost certainly remained in Iceland long enough to breed successfully. Females often leave the breeding grounds first, immediately after the chicks hatch, leaving the males to finish raising the young. This is why brightly-coloured adults in breeding-plumage start appearing in Ireland from late June onwards on their return migration, and why this is more likely to be a female. She is also just beginning her moult and transition into winter plumage. Over the coming weeks, the bright orange bill will fade to a dull pink, and its rusty feathers will be replaced by grey ones, providing a more suitable camouflage for muddy estuaries.

The bird on the right tells a different story. With its pink bill It could either be an adult that failed to breed successfully or an immature bird spending its second summer in Ireland. How can we tell?

Failed breeders have patches of rich chestnut-orange feathers on the neck, breast, and belly. Because they were in breeding condition only a few weeks before, they are actively shedding their bright feathers, creating a somewhat messy, patchy mix of bright orange and new grey winter feathers. They will also be hungry and feed intensely on the mudflats.

On the other hand, immature (non-breeding) birds never developed the rich chestnut breeding plumage in the first place. Their feathers are uniformly dull grey-brown, heavily worn and faded after a year without moulting. They have remained in Ireland throughout the summer instead of migrating to Iceland, and generally spend much more time roosting than feeding.

The bird that I photographed was feeding actively and still showed a patchy orange chest with distinct dark horizontal bars and a lower belly that looked ‘dirty’ and mottled, as it moults out of its summer coat. This is strong evidence that it was an adult failed breeder rather than an immature non-breeder.

By the time you read this, a new generation of Black-tailed Godwits will be arriving in Ireland on their first migration, south to their over-wintering grounds. Juveniles are particularly attractive birds. They have a lovely bright plain peachy breast and dark grey-brown upper feathers with neat, pale buff edges, that gives them a scaly pattern (see the second photograph, kindly provided by Ciarán Cronin).

Next time you visit one of West Cork’s estuaries, take a closer look at the Black-tailed Godwits. With a little practice, you may be able to distinguish between newly arrived juveniles, second-year birds that never migrated, and adults returning from their breeding grounds. While you are out watching the waders, also keep an eye out for birds with colour leg-rings. Recording and reporting these rings allows scientists to track migration routes, survival rates and breeding success. All that information helps to improve conservation measures for these remarkable birds. The third photograph, taken in August 2019 on Clonakilty Estuary, shows a colour-ringed Black-Tailed Godwit. This bird was ringed as an adult in Portugal in November 2011. it has since been recorded in Portugal, the Netherlands and Ireland, illustrating the extraordinary journeys these birds make each year.

If this has sparked your interest, and you would like to learn more about the birds that are on the estuaries near you, then why not join us in August, either in Timoleague or Rosscarbery (details below)? Families and beginners are especially welcome.

BirdWatch Ireland
West Cork Branch News

Upcoming outings being held by the Branch are:

Sunday, August 9:
Timoleague Educational Garden

Sunday, August 16:
Heritage Week – Rosscarbery

Sunday, August 23:
Pelagic boat trip
Visit our website www.birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie for more information about these events.  For more information about the Branch, contact Fiona O’Neill at secretary@birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie.

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Would you buy a diamond ring if it meant you were contributing to the death of a frog? What a silly question, you will say. What if the diamond ring led to the extinction of an entire frog species? Most people probably wouldn’t care about that either. But a diamond is just a piece of carbon, chemically identical to the lead in a pencil; a frog is a fellow creature with as much right to a happy life as a human. Surely, that should be far more valuable.

Many species of frog are endangered. They suffer from a deadly infection, chytridiomycosis, caused by a fungus that invades their skin, reducing their ability to breathe, hydrate or control body temperature. The fungus has been spread by the pet trade and also by the use of the African clawed toad for medical research in laboratories all over the world. Climate change has probably made conditions more favourable for the fungus. Frogs are also killed by absorbing, through their skin,  pesticides and other pollutants. Habitat loss, due to relentless human population increase, urbanisation and so-called ‘development’, is contributing to their decline, and millions of frogs get squashed on roads. Of the 7,600 or so known species of frog, 34 have become extinct in recent times, five in the last five years; 135 others haven’t been seen for decades and are possibly extinct too. Three more frog species are extinct in the wild and only survive in captivity. 

One species, the desert rain frog, was in the news recently, having just been classified as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. It is an enchanting little creature, found only in a small strip of sand dunes on the coast of southern Namibia and northern South Africa. It is one of 15 species of rain frogs, all globular and only a few inches across. Their legs are so short they are unable to hop, and the males can’t even clasp their females during mating, but have to produce a sort of glue to stick them together. They have bulging eyes and down-curving mouths, giving them the most mournful expressions. And well might they look mournful – several are endangered.

The desert rain frog is a very specialised animal, which is not a good thing to be when faced with man-made environmental changes. Living in an arid place is difficult for a frog. The only moisture this one ever gets comes from sea fogs, which dampen the sand enough for the frog to survive. It spends most of its life underground, buried deeply where the sand is still damp and where it can escape the heat of the day, only emerging at night to feed on insects. It lays its eggs in a burrow and, as there is no water around, has no tadpole stage, the eggs hatching directly into froglets.

Unfortunately, there are diamonds under the frogs’ desert home, and I can’t imagine any diamond miner, trader or jeweller, or African politician, being worried about a frog (they don’t always worry about humans – have you seen the film ‘Blood Diamond’?). All diamond mines damage the environment and threaten wildlife, and are quite unnecessary because diamonds can now be made synthetically. To mine for them in the only place where the desert rain frog can exist is just criminal.

The poor desert rain frog has other threats to face: industrial development, climate change, again, (causing even drier conditions) and something really preposterous: videos on the internet. These have been put there by people, probably not herpetologists, who think that the little frogs are “cute”, in the American sense of that word. Their appearance is extraordinarily endearing, but even better (for fools), if you make them angry, they squeak, just like a dog’s toy. What these morons don’t know is that the frog is angry for a very good reason, not just because it doesn’t like humans (perfectly understandable), but because if it is picked up, it will quite possibly die a horrible death. To help absorb as much moisture as it can, the belly of the desert rain frog is paper-thin, and so transparent its internal organs are visible. If it is handled roughly, the skin will rupture and its insides fall out. When it squeaks, it is actually screaming “Please, don’t touch me”. There might soon be queues of idiotic “influencers” filming themselves with these poor little amphibians, and huge demand for them as pets. Until their insides fall out.

One of the joys of an African night is the sound of frogs. There are 146 species in southern Africa alone, each with a distinctive call, made by the males to attract females. Three species lived in my garden in Zambia: fat, knobbly guttural toads, with creaking woody voices; red toads, dark, brick-red, with low, booming calls; and tiny painted reed frogs, yellow with irregular black and white stripes and blotches, which sang all night in a high-pitched, slightly metallic squeak, like an orchestra of tiny, tinkling bells.

I once took a year off teaching and went to work, voluntarily, in a nature reserve in Malawi (I would be there still if I had the money). There was a pond outside my wooden hut, home to two species of the totally aquatic clawed toads (one species – Xenopus laevis, was used in pregnancy tests – if a female frog was injected with the urine of a pregnant woman, it would produce eggs). There were also sharp-nosed grass frogs, a species that holds the world record for frog-jumping (10.3 metres in three  jumps), and foam-nest frogs, which turn white in the heat of the day, and lay their eggs in nests of bubbles that they build on tree branches above ponds and pools; the tadpoles hatch out in this foam and drop into the water.

To see other species, I had to trudge around the wetlands after sunset, with torch, camera and sound-recorder, often accompanied by a friendly ostrich. Greater leaf-folding frogs lived in the reeds by the edge of a large lake; they lay their eggs on reed leaves, which they then fold over and glue together into an envelope. There were many types of reed frog, one of which I couldn’t find in my frog book and hoped for a few weeks that it might be a new species. It wasn’t. There were other types of grass frog, and shovel-nosed frogs, bull frogs, rubber frogs and ornate frogs too. But the frog I most wanted to see was the bubbling kassina, a handsome yellow and brown striped amphibian whose strange call, like a stone plopping into water, can be heard all over southern Africa. I waited every night by the lake’s margin and listened to its call, but as soon as I got near, the noise would stop, and  the frog would creep silently away. I never did see one.

Ireland is not a great place for frog-lovers: there are just two species here – the common frog and the natterjack toad, and few people will ever see either. (The word toad is not scientifically specific; the true toads belong to one particular family of frogs but, confusingly, many other frogs are called toads). When I was in college, my only encounters with frogs were ones I would rather forget – dissections. Undergraduates at Trinity always dissected the frog, after the dogfish and before the rat. And at the College of Surgeons, research students used to give dissection courses every year to the pre-meds before their summer exams. We would buy the frogs from a frog farm somewhere down in the country – they arrived by train, in boxes of damp grass, and I would collect them from Heuston Station. 

Many people consider frogs ugly, slimy, even poisonous (some are, but can’t harm you if you leave them alone). But frogs are not only amusing and attractive, they eat slugs and insect pests, so should be our friends. They are also good indicators of the state of our planet, and their decline should be a serious cause for concern. One way to help frogs is to build a pond. It need not be anything fancy. When I lived in Zambia, I dug a hole in the garden big enough for a washing basin with a few rocks and weeds, and soon a gravid female guttural toad moved in. She would have spawned had she not been eaten by a mongoose. We don’t have mongooses in Ireland, only fanatical grass cutters, and there is no point making a pond, attracting frogs, and then spraying weed-killer and smashing them apart with a strimmer. The choice is yours – wildlife or useless lawns. And before you buy any diamond jewellery, please think about the desert rain frog. 

This month, branch Chair, Jez Simms, describes how some Egret species began to visit Ireland regularly, one species even breeding here now.

It was not until the latter half of the last century that birders in Ireland began to regularly encounter a beautiful pure white heron known throughout Europe and Africa as the Little Egret. A bird so beautiful it was nearly wiped out in Europe in the 1800s due to the great demand for its breeding plumes to make ladies hats. The campaign to save the bird led to the formation of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) in 1889, now the largest bird conservation group in Europe with over a million members.

A rarity in Ireland up to the late seventies, the first ever Little Egret was recorded in County Cork in 1940, more and more kept arriving until they were finally confirmed as a breeding species in 1997 at Fota in Co. Cork. Nowadays these beautiful birds can be seen gracing most waterways, lakes and coastal areas in the country with a population, including wintering birds; of approximately 1,500 birds with a breeding population of around 500 pairs.

The next Egret to start regularly visiting Ireland is the Cattle Egret, slightly smaller and less elegant than the Little Egret, these birds are not exclusive to water margins but, as their name suggests, like to roam amongst cattle and other herbivores in quest of the flies and other insects they attract, returning to water margins to roost and sometimes hunt. The first one recorded in Ireland was at Kilkeran Lake in West Cork on March 7, 1976, and then there were only around 10 more records between then and 2006. In 2007 there was a massive influx of Cattle Egrets during the winter with around 80 birds arriving along the south and west coasts, forever changing its status in Ireland. It is now a regular late Autumn and Winter visitor to our shore with flocks of birds into the high twenties sometimes occurring here in West Cork.

But that’s not all folks, back in 1986 Ireland’s first ever Great White Egret was found in Cobh; this was a very early sign of another major Egret expansion with a big influx starting in the 2000s. They first bred in the UK in 2012 and are now well established in Ireland, particularly in Co. Cork. They can often be seen on wetlands and marshes; breeding is suspected but not confirmed yet. These are magnificent birds, pure white and the size of our Grey Heron, with a distinctive long yellowish bill, unlike the black bill of the Little Egret, so they are hard to miss. They are almost resident at the Gearagh Nature Reserve near Macroom, with numbers sometimes building into double figures in the Autumn and Winter. At White’s Marsh near Clonakilty, I have seen all three of our Egrets feeding together.

While not a true Egret, there is another bird which might be showing signs of following them, this is the mega rare Squacco Heron. It is Egret-like in flight with its pure white wings, but when in reeds or in foliage its beautiful buff and brown plumage can make it hard to spot. In recent years the odd one has shown up in Ireland and this year an unprecedented three have been seen with quite a few in the UK as well, so maybe they are following a similar pattern. So, check your field guides and bird apps and keep an eye out for all these truly beautiful birds.

BirdWatch Ireland West Cork Branch News

Our next events are:

July 12: Nature walk on Whiddy Island.

August 9: Timoleague Educational Garden.

Visit our website www.birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie for more information about these events. To receive news and reminders about our events join our mailing list by sending an email to mailinglist@birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie.

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The illegal wildlife trade is the second biggest international crime after drug smuggling, but one hears about it less often. Personally, I think that wildlife smugglers should be punished far more harshly than drug dealers – after all, if someone wants to inject himself with heroin or addle his brain with cannabis, that is his own business, and there is an infinite quantity of such drugs available, but the smuggled animal has done nothing to deserve its horrid fate, and one day its kind will probably be extinct.

Hundreds of animal species are traded illegally, many for spurious Chinese medicine, some for meat, others to become exotic pets for wealthy fools who know little about them. While most people are aware of the slaughter of elephants, rhinos and pangolins for their body parts, it might be surprising to learn that there is also a thriving illegal trade in insects, e.g. rhinoceros beetles into Japan, praying mantises into the USA, butterflies out of Sri Lanka.           

Recently, criminals have been caught trying to smuggle thousands of ants out of Kenya. The particular species were harvester ants, which are popular with collectors because the queens are so big – up to 25 mm in length. On the black market, a single queen ant can make €200. One smuggler, a Chinese national, was caught with 2,000 queens, each caged in a little plastic tube. The same man was apparently behind a similar smuggling operation a year ago, when three foreigners and a Kenyan were caught with 5,540 queen ants; they were each fined just $7,700.

Harvester ants are seed-eaters, and while they carry seeds back to their nest, they invariably drop some, thus helping dispersal. There are many millions of ants in one nest, but only one queen, without whom the colony cannot function, so the collection of queens on such an industrial scale could seriously endanger their survival, as well as upset the local ecology.

Ants belong to the order Hymenoptera, which also includes sawflies, bees and wasps. Ants have been found preserved in amber dating back to the Cretaceous period, when the dinosaurs were still ruling the planet. They are social insects – there are no solitary ant species – and like social bees, they have different castes: queens, males and sterile workers. There are sub-divisions of workers too, such as nurse maids, foragers and soldiers. Ants resemble termites in some ways, and termites are often called ‘white ants’, but they are not at all related. Worldwide, there are over 13,000 described ant species, and no doubt many thousands more; 20 species live in Ireland. Being so small, ants are frequently overlooked, and are often considered pests; they certainly can be in the tropics – leave any food uncovered, and you will soon have battalions of ants marching away with it. But ants are not only important ecologically, they are also fascinating little creatures.

The Sahara silver ant is the second fastest insect, after the Australian tiger beetle. It has been recorded at 3.1 kph which, relative to body size, corresponds to a human running at 720 kph. The reason for the ant’s swiftness is its habitat – it lives in the Sahara Desert, and has to find food quickly before the mid-day sun becomes too hot – 53 degrees kills them. To minimise the effects of heat on their feet, they use only four legs for running, the first pair being raised like arms.

Leaf-cutter ants live in Central and South America. They spend their lives cutting pieces of leaves and carrying them, like large green sails, back to their nests. Each ant can carry a piece of leaf 50 times its own body weight. The leaves are used to nourish a fungus, which is then fed to the ant larvae; different species of leaf-cutter ants use different species of fungus. The adult ants feed on leaf sap.

Many insects store nectar and other sugary liquids in special compartments within their nests – honey bees of course make honeycombs. But honeypot ants use their own bodies to store food. Special types of workers, called repletes, are fed by other workers until their bodies become so swollen with honey that they can no longer move, and they form a sort of living wine cellar. When other ants are thirsty, they tickle the repletes with their antennae until honey is regurgitated. There are many species of honeypot ants in the tropics; Australian Aborigines eat them.

Ants defend themselves in three ways: they can bite, sting or spray formic acid (the name of the ant family is Formicidae). The stings of some species can be painful or even fatal to humans. The bullet ant of tropical America is said to have the most painful sting of any animal. The jack jumper ant from Australia can be fatal to those allergic to ant stings.

Most invasive animals and plants cause problems. Ants, being so small and industrious, are very likely to escape from captivity and wreak havoc. One famous example is what happened on Christmas Island, a tiny Australian territory in the Indian Ocean renowned for its red crabs. These brightly coloured crustaceans live for most of the year in forests, but like all crabs, they must return to the sea to spawn. They do this in unbelievable numbers, marching across roads, getting squashed by cars, puncturing tyres and causing accidents. Once considered pests themselves, the islanders have come to appreciate these crabs; park rangers now help them across the roads, special underpasses have been built for them, and locals drive more carefully. After spawning, the crabs return to their forests, and later, the juveniles follow them from the sea.

Unfortunately, yellow crazy ants, a particularly aggressive species that forms immense super-colonies, were introduced onto Christmas Island in the early 20th century. The ants evict the crabs from their burrows, and eat them; they have killed 10-15 million crabs, perhaps a third of the population. This has changed the ecology of the island, because the plants that the crabs used to eat have now started to take over areas of forest.

I had an alarming experience with red driver ants when I lived in Zambia. I saw them occasionally on the walk to school, and then one day a sticky mass of them appeared in my little garden pond, as the ants made a living bridge to get across it. I just thought that was rather interesting – until they invaded the house.

My maid screamed out: ‘Mpashi!’ [their name in Bemba]. ‘They will eat us!’ The whole veranda seemed to be alive, crawling and crackling, the outside wall covered by millions of ants. We shut the doors and windows, but soon the ants were pouring into the lounge through a hole in the wall. If I had been asleep, they would indeed have started to devour me.

I like and respect ants, but those ones had to go. We filled up buckets of hot water and washed them all into the garden where the birds had a feast.

There are about 60 species of driver ants in Africa; they are called siafu in Swahili. The ones in my garden were probably Dorylus helvolus, but I wasn’t thinking too much about positive identification at the time. They usually live in gigantic underground nests, but when food runs out, they set off in columns, up to 50 million strong. The workers are small, and march in the centre of the column, with the large and very pugnacious soldiers, who have square heads and big jaws, on either side; all are coloured a dark reddish brown. If one is careless when out walking and gets too close to a marching line of these ants, the soldiers will soon be up your legs and biting badly. The Maasai use them as sutures to heal cuts, because once their jaws clamp down, they don’t ever let go. The queens of this species are huge, up to five centimetres long; the clumsy winged males, which are attracted to lights and often crash-land in one’s evening whisky, are not much smaller, and are known as sausage flies.

Globally, most insect species are declining, because of pesticides, climate change, urbanisation, and all of you who insist on mowing your lawns every time the sun comes out. Illegal trading will only make things worse. Few people care much about insects, even though they are by far the most important animals on the planet. Many will not survive. But ants will. One day, when human overpopulation, unnecessary technology and idiotic consumerism render the Earth uninhabitable for higher animals, the ants, with their organisation and vast numbers, will still be here. 

In Italy, a Dublin Bay prawn is a scampo (plural scampi). Here in the 1970s, scampi tails with chips became a popular dish, but it was not cheap, so sometimes restaurants used substitutes such as monkfish. At the time, monkfish was thought too hideous and unfamiliar for our tastes, but cut into small prawn-shaped pieces and deep-fried, it could be served up, dishonestly, as scampi. No restaurateur would do that today, because their customers have learned that monkfish itself is delicious too.

But what exactly is a monkfish? The word is as ambiguous as prawn. In Alwyne Wheeler’s definitive Key to the Fishes of Northern Europe, the monkfish is Squatina squatina, an angel shark; it was the same in the Irish Specimen Fish Committee’s annual report. But in a restaurant or at the fishmonger’s, a monkfish is Lophius piscatorius, the anglerfish, something completely different.

The monastic connection goes back to 1546 when a creature called a ‘sea monk’ was captured in the Øresund, that narrow stretch of water between Sweden and Denmark. The sea monk was said to be a fish that resembled a monk dressed in his religious habit. It appeared in several serious scientific books of the time; those of Guillaume Rondelet in 1554 and Pierre Belon in 1555 both had, among relatively accurate drawings of fish and other marine animals, pictures of a beast with scaly tunic, spiky limbs and the tonsured head of a monk. It was thought by some to be either a badly-drawn giant squid, a merman or perhaps a Jenny Haniver – one of those fanciful creatures that sailors used to construct out of various dried animals. Renaissance academics were still inclined to believe in sea monsters – Rondelet’s book also has a drawing of a ‘sea bishop’, which had a vaguely human torso and head (plus bishop’s mitre) all covered in scales, but bare legs, like those of an ostrich.

Rondelet and Belon both knew the difference between the sea monk, the angel shark and the anglerfish. They called the angel shark Squatina (the name used by Linnaeus over 200 years later); Belon also named it ‘angelot de mer’, or angel of the sea – the large pectoral fins of the fish could be said to resemble angelic wings. The anglerfish, he called ‘grenouille de mer’ (sea frog) and ‘diable de mer’ (sea devil), both names applied today to certain types of anglerfish.

An angel shark does, with a little imagination, resemble a cowled monk, an anglerfish really doesn’t, so quite why and when sea monk, angel shark and anglerfish became conflated, I don’t know.

The anglerfish order, Lophiiformes, is made up of fifteen families, including the common anglerfish, the batfish, the frogfish and the truly bizarre deep-water anglerfish. There are hundreds of species. They are so named because of their method of catching prey – they all have a fishing rod, actually modified dorsal fin rays, the first of which has a fleshy knob, the lure, at its end. They are unique among bony fish in having their gill openings behind their pectoral fins instead of in front; also, they have depressible teeth, extensible stomachs, and no scales.

In Irish waters we have two species – the common anglerfish, Lophius piscatorius, and the smaller and rarer black-bellied anglerfish, L. budegassa, though other species live in very deep water. If you order monkfish in a restaurant here, it is the common anglerfish that you will be eating. It is very ugly; most of its body seems to be head, and its enormous mouth is armed with sharp, backward pointing teeth. For this reason, you will usually see only the tail on a fishmonger’s slab. It is found from shallow water down to 600 metres or more, where it lies buried in sand or gravel, waving the fishing rod in front of its jaws to entice a potential meal. When a fish approaches, thinking the lure is something edible, the angler opens its huge mouth, and the smaller fish quickly becomes the prey instead. Anglerfish eat all kinds of bottom-dwelling species and anything else they can catch, even rising to the surface to take sea birds.

Other members of the order are still uglier, and some quite extraordinary. The many species of frogfish include the Sargassum fish, a small angler which is camouflaged to resemble the clumps of Sargassum weed in which it floats in tropical seas. The batfish have their pelvic fins modified into leg-like structures with which they can walk on the sea bed. The weirdest of all the anglerfish, however, are the deep-sea species; some are quite terrifying to look at. The names of the different families give clues as to their grotesque appearances: football fish, whip-nosed anglers, wolf-trap anglers, black sea devils, warty sea devils. They are the fish of nightmares.

Deep-sea anglerfish live in mid-water, down to depths of 3,000 metres, where there is no light. So they have two big problems – finding food and finding a mate. They solve the first difficulty by having a lamp on the end of their fishing rod; the bioluminescence is produced by bacteria. Other fish see something shining in the dark, they swim closer to investigate, the huge open mouth snaps shut and the backward pointing teeth ensure no escape. As food is so scarce in their bathypelagic habitat, they must be able to swallow whatever they find, hence their enormously stretchable stomachs.

Reproduction is even stranger. They lay millions of eggs which hatch into planktonic larvae. The female grows normally, but the male becomes a dwarf with special biting jaws and no fishing rod. When he finds a female, guided by her luminous lure, he bites into her skin, and there he stays. In some species, their body tissues actually fuse, and the male becomes a parasite, getting his nutrients from the female’s blood, and releasing sperm whenever she wants to reproduce. Sometimes, one female will have several parasitic males attached. Males who never find a female will die because they can’t fish for themselves. The warty sea devil, Ceratias holboeli, is one of the largest species; the female grows up to 120 cm, but the male is never more than 6 cm long.

The other fish called monkfish – the angel sharks – also have flattened bodies for life on the sea bed, but that is really the only similarity to anglerfish. Being sharks, they have cartilaginous skeletons – no bones. Their gills open to the exterior via five slits on either side of the head, and their skin is covered in dermal denticles, like tiny teeth, which give all sharks their rough feel, as any fisherman will know who has been grazed by a dogfish. They live in relatively shallow waters, lying concealed in sand or mud until an unsuspecting fish passes by, and then the shark lunges up and grabs it.

There are 26 species of angel shark, all in the genus Squatina. Many of them are in trouble because of fishing, deliberately or as by-catch; the three species found in the eastern Atlantic, including S. squatina, the common angel shark, are all critically endangered. S. squatina was once plentiful in Ireland, and frequently caught by human anglers, especially in places such as Tralee Bay and Clew Bay. In the 1970s, like flapper skate and blue sharks, they were all killed, just for fun and photographs, and dumped back in the sea – there was no market for their meat here. But then anglers began tagging them, and they might have been all right but for the introduction of the tangle net. These death traps, set primarily for crayfish, also catch anything that swims into them, including angel sharks.

Much of the angel shark’s territory in Kerry is a designated national park, and last year Tralee Bay was declared an ‘important shark and ray area’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, yet fishermen still use tangle nets in these places. Ireland is one of the last refuges of the common angel shark, a fish whose ancestors swam in Jurassic seas and outlived the dinosaurs. What an absolute disgrace it would be if, whether due to politics, economics, or because the government just didn’t care, this shark was to become extinct.

This month, branch committee member Andrea Reichstein travels up to Rathlin Island, off the northern coast of County Antrim in Northern Ireland, to experience its birdlife and so much more.

After visiting Cape Clear for the very enjoyable week-long ‘Seabirds to Songbirds’ course held by Dick Coombes for Birdwatch Ireland two years ago, I once again felt drawn to visit one of Ireland’s many stunning islands. This year I decided to travel across Ireland to Rathlin island. It is a fairly epic journey, especially if done by public transport, which gives an added sense of adventure and the feel of travelling somewhere very exotic.

I went for a week at the end of April and was extremely lucky with the weather; the sun was splitting the rocks every day and it was very difficult to eventually leave this paradise.

Similar to Cape Clear, Rathlin is a great place for bird and nature lovers: Cape Clear has the bird observatory and Rathlin has the RSPB Rathlin West Light Seabird Centre – both are great for walking and exploring. But be warned, do not bring along someone who is a fan of quick walks; they won’t like it, as you will be stopping constantly – there is just so much to see and watch.

It is difficult to pick my highlights of the stay, but the following are definitely some. On my first morning, walking the ca 7km Rathlin Island Trail up to the seabird centre (there is also a bus, aptly named Puffin bus running between the ferry and the centre), I was perhaps 1km away from the centre when I spotted a massive bird. It came out of nowhere, flying low overhead, chased by crows. This was my very first sighting of a (juvenile) white-tailed eagle and it was something else! I was amazed to see such a big and powerful bird being chased by crows. I learned that juveniles do pass through, either from Scotland or the south of Ireland, but so far none of them have ever settled here. Hopefully this one has made its home here, as by the time I left, it had stayed around for five days, so maybe!

I decided to do the Kebble South Trail on the day I was due to leave the island. It’s a beautiful walk along the cliffs with great views onto some more cliffs where seabirds perch and you can look down on seals in the water below. I spotted two birds in the distance perched on a rock. At first glance, they looked a bit like gulls but then I realised that I was looking at Northern Ireland’s only breeding pair of great skuas! I had a few more encounters with them. From all directions, I could see them sitting on their elevated stone and they treated me with some flyovers, displaying their beautiful wing markings.

Rathlin is of course famous for the Golden Hare with its blonde fur and blue eyes, which is a result of a gene defect and only occurs on Rathlin island. There are only a handful of them born each year, out of 600-800 hares in total. So, if you love hares, you will love Rathlin. Throughout my visit, I kept a close eye out for the elusive golden hare. I saw plenty of hares, some noticeably brighter than others, but I was never quite sure whether I had actually found one. When I mentioned this to locals, they all gave the same response: if you see a golden hare, you’ll know it.

On my last evening I headed out onto the Ballyconaghan Trail, which numerous sources had told me is the best spot to spot one. That evening, with the sun hanging low in the sky, I turned a corner and saw them: two hares. One was a typical Irish hare, but the other was unmistakably a golden hare. The moment I saw it, I knew. I could hardly believe my luck. Its coat was a striking blend of pale blonde and white, and its vivid blue eyes made it look truly magnificent.

Then there were the seabirds. During the first two days of my stay, the cliffs around the seabird centre were teeming with life. Every available rock face seemed to be occupied by guillemots, while ledges were packed with razorbills, fulmars, kittiwakes and, of course, puffins. The sheer volume of birds was incredible, and the constant chorus of calls created an unforgettable atmosphere.

I had expected the colonies to come with a strong smell, but there was surprisingly little scent at all. Perhaps I had arrived early enough in the season to avoid it – I suspect things will be very different later in the summer.

As the week went on fewer and fewer birds were on the cliffs and it fell almost silent. Some visitors to the centre did not see a puffin so they were understandably disappointed.

Therefore, my top tip is this: don’t just visit Rathlin for the day. Stay for several nights, visit the seabird centre more than once, and take time to explore the rest of the island. There are several stunning walks and, even after five days on Rathlin, I didn’t feel that I had seen everything – or heard everything. Unfortunately, I was too early for the corncrake, or perhaps the corncrake was late; either way, we missed each other.

But the puffins! It is a joy simply to watch them. Even when they are not doing very much, they are somehow endlessly entertaining, whether waddling seemingly aimlessly about or trying to pull up vegetation, only to discover they are not quite strong enough and becoming visibly frustrated.

The seabird centre is also an excellent spot for watching whales, dolphins and other marine life. While I didn’t see any myself, several pods of dolphins had been spotted passing by in the week before my stay. I did, however, see seals, including both grey and harbour seals.

Rathlin Harbour is home to plenty of eider ducks, which were a real treat for me, especially because of their unusual and distinctive calls. They sound as though they have just heard a particularly juicy piece of gossip! It was to this sound that I fell asleep each night, and I have to say it has become one of my favourite bird calls.

I will definitely be back, not only to Rathlin, but also for a few days on Cape Clear.

BirdWatch Ireland
West Cork Branch News

Our next event is:

June 6 – Courtmacsherry Community Biodiversity Action Plan walk

June 24 – Swift walk in Clonakilty

Visit our website www.birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie for more information about these events. To receive news and reminders about our events join our mailing list by sending an email to mailinglist@birdwatchirelandwestcork.ie.

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When I was young, I recall being intrigued by a poster in the Post Office warning farmers that they could be prosecuted for having noxious weeds growing on their land. The full list I have forgotten but it certainly included ragwort, dock and, I think, thistle. We are constantly trying to eliminate weeds from our gardens. Sometimes I find this hard to do because these so-called weeds are often beautiful and were once used widely in folk medicine and for other uses.

Ragwort, with its bright yellow, daisy-like flowers and toxic leaves, was regarded as a fairy plant to be treated with caution. It is known in Irish as Buachalán Buí, with alternative names such as Balcaiseán, Bóthanán, Buafalán, Gaosadán, Coiseog Bhuí and Las San Séan (Plant of St James). In English it has several alternative names including Bohalawn, Fairy Horse, James’ Weed, Ragged Jack, Staggerwort, Yellow Boy, etc.

In ancient Ireland it was believed that ragwort was used like a horse by the fairies to ride around on. Their favourite time for doing this was Hallowe’en and many stories tell of unfortunate people abducted and forced to ride around with them all night, only to wake the next morning exhausted, clutching the ragwort in their hands. However, the fairies could also be more generous. A well-known folktale relates how a fairy host takes a man with them on a magical journey. They give him a special cap and tell him to mount a ragwort as if it were a horse. He finds himself flying through the air and landing in a wine cellar in a foreign country. There he drinks his fill, but the next morning he finds himself alone and is then arrested for breaking into the wine cellar. He is sentenced to be hanged, but before the rope can be put around his neck, he manages to reach into his pocket and put on his fairy cap. He is lifted up into the air and brought back home, to be left standing beside the ragwort at the very spot where he first met the fairies. An old song describes the fairy ride: ‘Is gur shiúil mé na cúig cúigí; Is gan fúm act buachallán buí’ (And I travelled through all the provinces with nothing under me but the ragwort). A Sligo saying reflected the caution generally shown in Ireland towards ragwort: ‘Don’t call it a weed, though a weed it may be, ’tis the horse of the fairies, the booholaun buidhe’.

In the Scottish highlands, it was said that the fairies sheltered beside the ragwort on stormy nights, and also rode astride it on their journeys in the Hebrides, from island to island. Witches and warlocks were also believed to ride around on ragwort stems, as well as the more usual broom. A poem by Robbie Burns describes the devil and his witches and warlocks riding together: ‘Let warlocks grim, an’ wither’d hags / Tell how wi’ you on ragweed nags / They skim the muir (moors) an’ dizzy crags / Wi’ wicked speed.’ In Scotland, after the battle of Culloden, the victorious English are said to have named the garden flower ‘Sweet William’ in honour of their leader, William, Duke of Cumberland. The defeated Scots (who were massacred cruelly by the English) retaliated by giving ragwort the name ‘Stinking Billy’. Alternatively, the Scots maintained that the spread of ragwort throughout Scotland was due to the rampage across the land by the Duke of Cumberland’s troops during the Culloden campaign. Ragwort is the national emblem of the Isle of Man, perhaps because of the island’s nickname, ‘Ynn Ellan Shiant (The Fairy Isle).

Ragwort’s association with the fairies was believed to give it other magical properties. A Donegal folktale tells of a man with fairy power who used to turn a bunch of ragwort into the form of a pig. The man brought the ‘pig’ to a fair and sold it, but as the unfortunate buyer was driving it home, he crossed running water and the ‘pig’ instantly turned back into a bunch of ragwort. In places it was believed to be bad luck to strike a cow with the flowers of ragwort because it meant the ‘wee folk’ would be sure to come and steal the cow’s milk.

Ragwort was called the ‘herba Sancti Jacobi’ (the herb of Saint James) whose feast day is July 25 when the ragwort is in full bloom. Interestingly, in view of the ragwort’s role as a ‘fairy steed’, St James is said to be the patron saint of horses.

Ragwort is despised by farmers because its leaves are toxic to livestock. Despite this, ragwort features in several Irish cures. The leaves were used in many places as the basis for poultices and the juice was used for curing cuts, sores and inflammation, including burns, scalds and boils. Perhaps because of its yellow colour, ragwort was also considered as an effective cure for jaundice. Ragwort was also used for treating coughs, colds, sore throats, rheumatism and sore joints. In West Cork, ragwort was used to make brooms and brushes for sweeping the house. In Scotland and Ulster ragwort was put in with oats when they were stored to keep mice away.

Now indoors with the door and windows wide open, I can still feel a gentle sea breeze brushing against my face and arms and circulating my little home here. My feet are bare, toes touching the ground and heels resting against the legs of the chair. All is well in this moment, this perfect moment of awareness, appreciation, and of living life fully. I love the simplicity of soaking it all in, this intentional taking in the good and savouring it. I take time to feel my body against all the surfaces, the ground, the chair, my elbows on the table or armrest, fingers touching the keyboard, and I repeatedly sense into the moment, almost exaggerating this momentary awareness of being present in this body, with no pressure, nothing to do, nowhere to go. Resting in the embrace of nature and this amazing natural world.  

And maybe because this dry, calm, sunny weather has been so rare this year, it seems extra precious and, I’m sure like most people, I want it to stay. We naturally want these good times to last, however, by the time it took me to move indoors, because the sun was cooling, I had received news of the deaths of two people I knew. A stark reminder that life is so unpredictable and can change in the blink of an eye. All the more reason for us to value our lives and the people and places we hold dear.  I pause and intentionally think of these affected families and a feeling inside of me stirs. Their grief resonates with me, and I feel deep discomfort and a sense of deep compassion for them.  

Compassion-based mindfulness encourages qualities like empathy, inclusion, solidarity and having the ability, as well as making the choice, to step into someone else’s shoes and offer compassion.

But while we can make choices every moment of our lives about how we live them, we really have no control over events that happen every day. So, there is something about noticing and relishing the good moments while accepting their impermanent nature and being able to sit with and accept the difficult moments too, instead of resisting them. Having the knowledge that a day going so smoothly and perfectly can be instantly interrupted can help us to be very grateful for those moments in the sun and our leisure time, simply because nothing stays the same for too long.  

Nature can be so reassuring amid all that’s happening within us and around us. It is a constant in our lives and yet always in a state of flux and flow. The amazing, heroic swallows are back and that fills so many of us with joy. To sit and watch them swooping and circling, imagining all they went through to get back here is truly awe-inducing. Perhaps our everyday mindfulness practices this month can be to garner moments of comfort from simply sitting listening to the birds or quietly watching the swallows. Can we put our phones and the news aside for a small while and feel the life that is bursting forth at this time of year? This poem ‘Allow’ by Danna Faulds is a nice one to contemplate.

‘There is no controlling life. / Try corralling a lightning bolt, / containing a tornado. Dam a

stream and it will create a new / channel. Resist, and the tide / will sweep you off your feet.

Allow, and grace will carry / you to higher ground. The only / safety lies in letting it all in – / the wild / and the weak; fear, / fantasies, failures and success. / When loss rips off the doors of / the heart, or / sadness veils your / vision with despair, practice / becomes simply bearing the truth. / In the choice to / let go of your / known way of being, the whole / world is revealed to your new eyes.’

Mindfulness in May

Drop-in mindfulness hour at CECAS, Myross Wood, Leap on Tuesday mornings 10-11am, May 12, 19 and 26. €12. 

Beginners, returners and newcomers are always welcome.
For more information: phone: 087 2700572 or email:
susanoreganmindfulness@gmail.com 

FB: susanoreganmindfulness. www.mindhaven.ie

I was recently shown a photograph of something from a local beach that I hadn’t noticed before. It resembled a giant honeycomb growing over a mussel-covered rock. The thing was a colony of Sabellaria alveolata, the honeycomb worm. The individual worms are only about four centimetres long, but each builds a tube made of sand grains and tiny pieces of broken shell, all stuck together with mucus, which is attached to neighbouring tubes, forming an extensive colony that looks like something a bee or wasp might have made. At low tide, the worm hides inside the tube, but when the tide comes in, it extends its tentacles to catch microscopic food particles. Most Sabellaria reefs are found between tide marks, although the largest one in Ireland, the Wicklow reef, is sub-tidal.

The word ‘worm’ doesn’t apply precisely to any one group of animals. Some creatures are called worms that are not worms at all – I wrote before about the shipworm, which is a bivalve mollusc. A woodworm is a beetle, so is a glow-worm; an inch-worm is a type of caterpillar, a slow worm is a legless lizard. Several other unrelated creatures, most known only to zoologists, are called worms too, such as arrow worms, acorn worms, bootlace worms and tongue worms.  

The worms that ordinary people are most likely to encounter belong to the phyla Platyhelminthes, Nematoda and Annelida. The platyhelminths are the flatworms, tapeworms and flukes. Flatworms are mostly free-living. Some are brightly coloured sea creatures; others are invasive garden pests such as the Australian and New Zealand varieties. Tapeworms resemble very long strands of tagliatelle, made up of dozens of units that are actually bags of eggs. They are all parasitic, living in the digestive systems of many vertebrates from fish to pigs, and humans too if you don’t cook your meat adequately. Flukes are also parasitic; the best known in Ireland is the liver fluke, Fasciola hepatica, which infects sheep and cattle. The serious tropical disease, bilharzia, is caused by a fluke called Schistosoma.

The most abundant worms are the nematodes or round worms. There are many thousands of species, mostly microscopic, living in every known ecosystem from the Arctic to the ocean floor; in some soils, there might be a million nematodes per square metre. Many roundworms are parasites; those of the family Anisakidae are common in fish; eating raw fish can lead to anisakiasis which, not surprisingly, is common in Japan. In the tropics, other nematodes cause more horrible afflictions, such as elephantiasis and river blindness. 

The annelids are segmented worms; their bodies are divided into many sections, each with copies of all the important organs. There are three classes of annelids: Oligochaeta, the earthworms; Hirudinea, the leeches; and Polychaeta, the marine worms.

There are about 10,000 species of oligochaetes, most living in soil, some in freshwater. Common earthworms, Lumbricus terrestris, are vital to soil quality, because their burrowing carries nutrients such as leaf litter, as well as air and water, from the surface down into the soil; Charles Darwin’s last book was on that subject. The worms that live in your compost bins – you all have compost bins of course – are brandlings, Eisenia fetida.

The longest earthworm in Europe is Lumbricus badensis from the German Black Forest, which grows to 60 centimetres, but the real monsters belong to the family Megascolecidae, e.g. the giant Gippsland earthworm from Australia, which can reach two metres.

Leeches are similar to oligochaetes, except that they have a sucker at both ends, used for locomotion (they move in the same manner as inch worms) or for attachment to a host. There are over 600 species, three-quarters of which are blood-suckers, the rest free-living predators. Fishermen might be familiar with a large leech called Pontobdella muricata, which lives on skates and rays. The medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis, has been used for centuries for the spurious cure-all of ‘blood-letting’. Today, doctors use them to reduce swelling and restore circulation after microsurgery, and also to treat varicose veins. When I was doing a frog survey in Malawi, I spent most evenings wading around at the edge of a small lake, and when I got back to my hut and took off my boots, there were often leeches inside, sucking away at my blood.

The last group of annelids are the polychaetes. There are also about 10,000 species, divided into two sub-classes: Sedentaria and Errantia. The lugworm is one of the former. It leads a dull life in a U-shaped burrow in muddy sand, above which, as every shore angler knows, is the cast – that coil of sand that has passed through its digestive system. Other sedentary polychaetes live in tubes made out of mucus and sand or fragments of shell, e.g. the peacock worm and the sand mason worm, both common on the lower shore. The honeycomb worm belongs to this group.

Some sedentary worms make calcareous tubes: Spirorbis, whose tube is coiled like a tiny snail shell, lives attached to rocks and seaweed; Pomatoceros, which makes long, white wiggly tubes, is  often seen on rocks, shells and fishermen’s buoys.

Many tube worms have feathery, fan-like tentacles that can resemble beautiful flowers. The Christmas tree worm, Spirobranchus giganteus, found in tropical seas, has two fans made of several whorls, each looking like an artificial Christmas tree. 

The Errantia contains active, predatory worms. Ragworms, also used as bait by anglers, have “parapodia” or false legs growing out from each segment, with which they crawl or swim. Unlike lugworms, they have tentacles, eyes and, in some species, big sharp jaws. The sea mouse, Aphrodita aculeata, which you might find at extreme low tide, looks more like a drowned mouse than a worm, being short, fat and hairy, but its bristles shine in gorgeous iridescent greens and purples. Another group, the gossamer worms, are specialised for life in the plankton, where they paddle about emitting a yellow bioluminescence at night.

Most annelids are harmless, though there are exceptions. The Mongolian Death worm from the Gobi Desert can kill humans by squirting a deadly poison; just touching this worm is fatal. Fortunately it only exists in the minds of cryptozoologists. But fireworms, found on tropical coral reefs, have bristles which contain a toxin that can cause pain, irritation and nausea. The larger errant polychaetes can give you a nasty bite. One species is especially scary –  the trap-jaw worm. This creature, which can grow to nearly three metres in length, spends its time buried in the sand around Indo-Pacific coral reefs. When it senses a fish nearby, it lunges up out of its burrow, and its huge open jaws snap shut on the surprised fish, which is then dragged down into the sand. A reef fish called Scolopsis affinis has learned how to retaliate by squirting jets of water at the worms.

Zoologists are forever changing the classifications that I learned years ago. Beard worms, for example, once in their own phylum, Pogonophora, are now classified as annelids. The best known of these is Riftia pachyptila, a giant tube worm that can also grow to three metres. It lives around hydrothermal vents deep in the Pacific, part of a community of animals adapted to darkness and temperatures as high as 380 degrees Celsius. Also now placed among the annelids are the sipunculids. I was once very pleased to be able to identify a plateful of these unimpressive worms in a restaurant in Xiamen, China, where they are a local delicacy. They came in a sort of jelly, and like so many odd things the Chinese eat, tasted only of soy sauce, garlic and ginger.

The Chinese are not the only ones who eat worms. The palolo worm, similar to a ragworm, is very important in the South Pacific. Cork-born writer and artist Robert Gibbings, in his book ‘Over the Reefs’, described their capture in Samoa. On just a few nights in October or November, when the moon is in its last quarter, the palolo rise to the surface in great writhing masses and release their reproductive segments, which are the edible bits. They apparently taste better than oysters but smell like the reef at low tide.

To the average person, worms are disgusting, squirmy things, and parasitic worms are so unpleasant that anyone without an understanding of natural selection must surely wonder why they exist at all. Sir David Attenborough (who is 100 years old this month) uses the nematode that causes river blindness to explain his agnosticism – how can a merciful god have created a worm which lives only by burrowing into a child’s eyeball?

But the majority of worms are unobtrusive, some are quite beautiful, and many are important environmental engineers; even the nasty ones have ingenious life-cycles. We should be fascinated by worms, not be disgusted by them.