Bugs and Butterflies

Accessible August 

It’s been a very busy week! The best part about it was that my sister, Aoibhinn (pronounced Eeving), is visiting and she and I were able to do lots of things together. That’s her in the coral jacket, above. You see, she has ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and she was really nervous about her ability to participate in the activities I had booked or planned, or stay the course once on them. 

Aoibhinn does really well at managing her condition, but she has to be very careful or she can end up in a major crash. She struggles with tiredness and pain all the time (sore joints, headaches) but finds that sea swimming helps her cope mentally, so she was up for one of the things we planned to do together, our Dawn Swim and Pilgrimage with Gormú. We met Conor and Celine, and two other participants at Castlehaven and started off by walking the short way up to the Holy Well, where we heard of St Barrahane. Readers may remember Conor from the Placenames post.

Next came the swim. While Aoibhinn opted for a short immersion, I surprised myself by swimming all the way to Faill Dic, with encouragement from Conor, and the lovely safety valve of a float if I needed it. Breakfast was so welcome – porridge, fruit and hot tea made by Celine and Conor (below) – while we listened to more stories, all set around the cove we were in. It was a fantastic experience – I highly recommend it!

The Ellen Hutchins Festival and Heritage Week are both in full swing this week, so there are any god’s amount of things to choose from. We concentrated on botany and butterflies during the week and ended with stained glass and history yesterday. 

Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington and Nick Scott led us through the Glengarriff Woods. While this walk involves an uphill section, the pace is easy because it involves lots of stopping to talk about the plants we encounter along the way. We loved Nick’s descriptions of the forest environment, and all the layers that make up the plant life from the canopy down. And we were riveted by Micheline’s focus on the Arbutus (AKA the Strawberry Tree), a rare tree that occurs only here and in the Iberian Peninsula. 

Micheline is investigating her theory that it may have come with the Bronze Age miners who came to exploit the rich copper resources of West Cork and Kerry. Her recent article in Archaeology Ireland sparked my interest and I was thrilled to be able to go along on this walk with her.

The photograph above illustrates the challenges in tracking Arbutus trees – they grow on cliffs and in inaccessible places.

Our Wednesday walk was organised by the Cork Nature Network and was led by my friend Damaris Lysaght, a real local expert in plants and butterflies. And as if that wasn’t enough, it was at Three Castle Head, one of the most beautiful spots in Ireland and a place dripping with history. 

Once again, although this walk involved picking our way through long grasses and scrambling over rocks, the pace was slow, with frequent stops to ooh and aah over butterflies and hear Damaris talk about their habitats and plant requirements. Some of the plants were so tiny that we had to see them through a hand lens to really appreciate them.

We had a rest day on Thursday, and on Friday it was time for Seaweed and Sealing Wax 2. This was the second production masterminded by Karen Minihan, based on the correspondence between Ellen Hutchins and Dawson Turner. See Robert’s post from last year for an account of Seaweed and Sealing Wax 1. This year, we were joined by the poet, Laura McKenna and the botanical artist Shevaun Doherty. That’s Shevaun surrounded by audience members in the top photo of this post, while Laura is in the photo below.

While Karen and I led the audience through the letters, Laura read a selection of poems that responded to Ellen’s life and work, and Shevaun worked away on painting a piece of seaweed, explaining her process to the audience at one point. 

At the end, Madeline Hutchins, Ellen’s great, great, grandniece, showed us some of Ellen’s books and letters. As with last year, we were under a tent in the grounds of Sea View House Hotel, right next door to where Ellen herself had lived in the opening years of the nineteenth century. 

We finished the week with a trip to Timoleague, where I was booked to give two stained glass talks at the Church of the Ascension Open House. This is part of a huge community effort to save and safeguard the fabulous mosaics in this church and I am always thrilled to be a part of it. Take a look at this video by the Rev Kingsley Sutton, Touching Heritage, to get an excellent overview of the whole project.

The church is truly one of West Corks hidden gems, and the fund-raising effort needs all the help it can get. In between the talks, we were whisked off to lunch at a fabulous private house right on the sea. Nice work if you can get it!

So – it’s been an incredibly busy week of flowers, talks, and butterfly hunting (above) and I am feeling it now. But all of our activities were  accessible to Aoibhinn, with time to rest in between, or go for a lovely dip locally. So – if there’s anybody out there who wonders if you would be able for a botany walk or a dawn swim and ‘pilgrimage’ – no need to be intimidated by a title or a description when the pace is leisurely and, as Aoibhinn found, there’s always a handy rock to sit down on for a while.

Our Lockdown Mascot

Will we need a reminder in years to come of the lockdown we are living through now? If so, he arrived this week – Finbarr, the Bug Hotel and Lockdown Mascot.

You may remember our post about Kloë and Adam, the Two Green Shoots, who have established their edible Garden of Reimagination on the Glengarriff to Kenmare Road. When we visited I saw their own ‘Glen’ and noted that they could make them for others. It didn’t take long for us to decide that this is what our garden needed to feel complete.

We wanted to call him Finbarr. Regular readers will know I have a soft spot for Finbarrs – see this post about Finbarr the Pheasant, and this one about St Finbarr and his serpent. He’s Cork’s Patron Saint, after all, and associated with so many Cork places and stories. The name Fionn Barr means fair head, so of course my request was for a figure with lots of blond hair.

Kloë and Adam arrived this week to instal Finbarr.  They are classed as essential workers and we were all mindful of socially distancing as I photographed the process. It was quite a job, involving digging a hole through unforgiving rocky ground for a large stake to secure him from the back, then building up the wall to support him from underneath. 

Finbarr’s body is filled with insect-attracting spaces and materials, arranged to create a colourful centrepiece, with buttons down the front. Once his body was in place and secure, Kloë attached the arms and legs, which had been pre-organised as a series of rounds each drilled with various sizes of holes for different insect.

His hair is his crowning glory! It’s made of fleece (it took two and a half fleeces!) which birds will discover in time and use as nesting material. Kloë left us a repair kit of fleece to fill in the gaps as he becomes a little threadbare over time. 

We chose a site right beside the road so everyone who passes can wave at Finbarr. We hope especially that kids will like him. It’s also one of the few relatively sheltered spots on our land, and that’s important when the winter storms hit. 

So if you’re in the neighbourhood, swing by and say hello to Finbarr.

Two Kilometres

That’s all we’re allowed during the Covid19 lockdown for ‘necessary exercise.’ But I have spent years now exploring the townlands around us and I like nothing better than to ramble out with my camera looking out for whatever comes my way, like Rossbrin Castle, above. Robert has done something similar this week – each of us with our own take on what life is like here right now.

From the top: Seven-spot Ladybird; Peacock Butterfly; Mr Bull and his two cows observing social distancing

I’ve learned so much this way about the natural world. A lot of it has ended up as blog posts on Roaringwater Journal or as entries on my Wildflowers of West Cork Facebook Page.

From the top: Herb Robert, Greater Stitchwort and Ground-ivy

There is archaeology and history all around us too, from a wedge tomb to a tower house, from mining complexes to ring forts and standing stones.

From the top: a ruined farmstead bears witness to population decline; Mount Gabriel looms over a pastoral scene; the old gate once led into a mine

We miss our friends, The Chat in Budds, our Irish lessons and conversation group, the Book Club and Art House Cinema and Talks at the Vaults and all the other events that get us out into the community and keep us curious and learning. We miss our long drives, our Holy Well and Stone Circle hunting trips – and our lattes!

From the top: Tadpoles; Ivy-leaved Toadflax on an old stone wall

But these are small, first world, complaints and we do know how privileged we are to be well, to be able to buy groceries online, not to have small children to entertain and educate at home, and most of all to live in such incredible surroundings. It’s a good reminder not to take those privileges for granted.

I think I have barn envy

Meanwhile, we want to support everyone’s efforts to flatten the curve and we are in awe of the selfless dedication of so many people and desperately sympathetic to those who have lost income. The best way we know to do this is to be cooperative and follow the rules. And that’s what we are doing, mostly staying at home and when we go out keeping our walks to a 2km radius.

From the top: Contrasting textures – bark and barn; Distant view of Castle Island with the remaining castle wall and the abandoned farm houses

So herewith is a selection of what we’ve seen in the past few days as we walk several different 2km routes that present themselves from our front gate. Many of the wildflowers are tiny and only lots of practice enables me to spot them in the verges or the fields.

From the top: Dandelions and Celandine; Common Mouse-ear; Thrift and Scurvygrass 

It seems like spring has been slow to come this year although when I look back at previous years I see much the same assemblage of flowers for late March and early April. But beyond a golden day or two, it hasn’t warmed up yet so there is no sense of spring suddenly ‘bustin’ out all over’. Nevertheless the hedgebanks are slowly coming to life and I see something new every day.

From the top: Wild Strawberry; Three-cornered Garlic (AKA Three-cornered Leek); Scarlet Pimpernel; Primrose

The rock faces at my favourite bog soak are always fascinating, although you have to lie flat with your face an inch from the surface to really grasp the miniature world that teems on its surface. I’m still determined to improve my knowledge of lichen and mosses, but I can’t pretend I’ve advanced much.

From the top: Devil’s Matchstick, a type of Cladonia lichen: I don’t know

How are you all doing out there? Leave a comment and let us know – we want all our dear readers to stay safe and well!

 

Lichens and Little Things in the Woods

The wonderful Ellen Hutchins Festival for 2019 has just finished – now in its fifth year and going from strength to strength in celebrating all the aspects of botany that Ellen practised. You can read about Ellen in my post Ellen Hutchins: The Short and Remarkable Life of Ireland’s First Female Botanist. We participated again in 2016 and I wrote about our fascinating walk Into the Woods with Pádraig Whelan and Howard Fox.

This year there was the same wide variety of botany-related activities, including an impressive array of events for children. We attended (above) a talk by Madeline Hutchins (Ellen’s GGG-Niece) about her life, with an emphasis on her letters and a talk on letter writing of the period by Carrie O’Flynn and then, last weekend, a Lichen Walk in beautiful Glengarriff Woods (first photograph, top).  Been there yet? If not, you’re missing a real treat.

The focus of the walk was lichen of course (apparently it is acceptable to say lyken or litchen so take your pick) with Paul Whelan (above). Paul has a website at Lichens of Ireland which seems to be down for maintenance, but there’s another one, Irish Lichens, run by Jenny Seawright, which I’ve been using and finding easy to follow, especially for a neophyte like me. But even though the subject was lichens, once you enter the woods it’s easy to get distracted by other things, so for me the day was as much about the insects and flowers that we saw (sorry, Paul) on our short, but incredibly rich, walk.

What are these people doing? This is how close you have to get, with a hand lens, to see the tiny patches of lichen on the rocks of the bridge

So what is a lichen? It’s a fungus, but one that works with another organism (usually green algae but sometimes a cyanobacteria) to produce something neither can do on their own. Since lichens can’t photosynthesise, they depend on the other organism to do that. The fungus contributes by consuming dead matter and this mutually beneficial and necessary relationship is called symbiotic.

And this is what we were seeing

The lichen body is called a thallus, and it produces spores (which is how it reproduces) through an apothecium (which looks like a tiny cup) or a perithecium (which looks like a tiny volcano). We saw mostly lichen with perithecia on our walk, some of which were just tiny black dots.

We also saw some foliose lichens – leaf like things such as the one immediately above, although you had to get very close with a hand lens to even see the leafy structures of some of them. Others were bigger and more obvious – these Usnea lichens (below) are like tiny bonsai leafless trees and attach to rocks and trees by a single contact point.

I had already written (in my post Miniature World) about the Cladonia Lichen such as the Devil’s Matchstick, and now that I know a bit more about lichens I’ve been browsing around our own garden and I found some on a rock wall (below) – not only Devil’s Matchsticks but the ones called Pixie Cups as well.

And the ‘other things’ on the walk? Clare Heardman from the National Parks and Wildlife Service, who seems to know about the whole gamut of wild organisms, was excited to see a fly land on Robert’s back. No ordinary fly, it turns out, but a Dark Giant Horse Fly (Tabanus sudeticus) – the largest and heaviest fly in Europe! We know it’s a female by the space between her eyes (males have no space) and it’s the female that bites and sucks your blood. One source I consulted says: Unlike insects which surreptitiously puncture the skin with needle-like organs, horse flies have mandibles like tiny serrated scimitars, which they use to rip and slice flesh apart. Charming, but fortunately she flew away before inflicting that on Robert.

Nearby, another fly was feeding on some Ling Heather, this time a hoverfly. Trying to identify hoverflies is a head wreck, there are so many different types, but I think this one is called parasyrphus lineola, one of the little forest hoverflies that like a conifer environment. Hoverflies are next to bees in importance as pollinators – it’s not that they carry as much pollen, but they are so busy and make so many visits to flowers that they do a sterling job. They also keep aphid populations under control.

You can see the dusting of pollen on this hoverfly

When we arrived at the pond Paul showed us the Usnea lichens – one tree over the water was entirely decorated with them, although they also like to grow on rocks as well. They belong to the Fruticose Lichens and on his website he describes them thus: Fruticose lichen appear tufted and shrubby and are usually erect or pendant and attached to the substrate at a single point. Filamentous lichen are soft and hair-like and some form felt-like mats comprised of very fine filaments.

The pond itself was alive with water striders, amazing little creatures that walk on water. A little Googling led me to this short video about how exactly they accomplish this, and what they live on (don’t watch if you’re squeamish).

As I was watching them, my eye was caught by a flash of brilliant blue and down came a damselfly to rest on one of the long reeds overhanging the pond. It was the aptly named Beautiful Demoiselle and a male, which has the striking metallic blue colour. This reed was its perch, from which it guarded its territory and kept an eye on passing edible insects, leaving it to chase them and then return. (There’s a good Wikipedia page on them.)

It was a great walk, all in all, and we can’t now go anywhere without checking out our surroundings for lichen. On a walk on Long Island yesterday I was attracted to the patches of bright orange and white lichen on the rocks. Here’s what I saw, at a distance and close up:

I was also delighted to see heather and lichen growing on one rock surface, and very attractive it looked together. The lichen might be one of the Cladonias, but please correct me if I’m wrong.

My previous feelings for lichen were all negative, since they obscure rock art and headstones, but now – have we caught the lichen bug? I hope not, since it already takes me an hour to walk around the block, stopping to look at flowers. What do you think, Dear Reader – is there any hope for us?

 

Mizening

What do you do when a fine day dawns and you want something totally relaxing? You go Mizening, of course! OK, it’s not a real word, but it should be – for the act of wandering at will around our wonderful peninsula.

We’ve been tied up a lot lately with the West Cork History Festival – it was a great success, by the way, with a wide variety of speakers and topics. We really enjoyed leading two of the field trips, including one that involved much dodging rain showers. But now it’s time to get back to our true avocation – meandering lazily around our own patch of heaven.

So what follows is a record of a blissful day on the Mizen, doing not much of anything, drinking coffee, visiting new friends, observing the wildlife, popping into the Blue House Gallery – well, you get the picture.

Those new friends? Judi and Pete Whitton, both artists, with a home and Gallery near Schull. Judi and I felt we knew each other already although we had never met in person, just through the wonders of the internet. She has a gorgeous show, Easel in the Ditch, running at the moment (follow the signs from Lowertown) – we were bowled over by her beautiful watercolours.

Above – Newcourt Bridge – Judi had seen my post on this ‘hidden wonder’ of West Cork and had to paint it

Then it was off for a walk in the countryside. You think you’ve been down all the little roads before, but there are always surprises.

Cobwebs in an abandoned church

It’s August now and many of the flowers have finished blooming, but others have come along to take over and the boreens are still a delight.

We’ve had an invasion of Painted Lady butterflies. Normally, this is a phenomenon that happens once a decade, but it’s starting to happen more often now, and scientists feel it may be down to general climate warming. The butterflies are especially attracted to the Knapweed, which is abundant, although they have to compete with the bees for it.

We were seeing lots of dragonflies too, although they wouldn’t stay still enough to allow a photograph – I finally snuck up on this one (above, both images), which it turns out is a Ruddy Darter. Well named!

After more obligatory wildflower photography (example above, Eyebright), we dropped into Schull to see the latest Exhibition at the Blue House Gallery. Titled cleverly Blau Haus/Bauhaus, the downstairs show is based on the Bauhaus, the German arts, crafts and design school, founded a hundred years ago, that dragged us all into the twentieth century, .

A tiny taster of the Bauhaus-inspired pieces above – a detail from a tall fused glass and bronze collaboration by Angela Brady and Holger Lönze, and a teapot by David Seeger

Upstairs was an entirely different show – The Drawn Line, curated by Catherine Weld. I was particularly taken with this line drawing by Christina Todesco-Kelly, titled simply Satchel.

A lovely day! I did mention coffee, so I will end with a detail from Judi Whitton’s portrayal of our favourite local, place to get coffee (or lunch or dinner!) – Budd’s of Ballydehob. It captures so well what Mizening is all about and it’s the first thing we see as we approach Ballydehob from Nead an Iolair.

 

Heir Island – a Modern Paradise

You know that term, Island Paradise? Well, this week I went there. It’s called Heir Island, and it’s one of the inhabited islands of Roaringwater Bay. It was the first of many visits, I hope, and it was taken in the good company of Trish Punch and two Islanders, Christine Thery and Sarah Mathews.

This is the view of Heir Island from our own home – the grouping of houses behind the sandy beach is called Paris!

Heir (sometimes rendered as Hare) is Inis Ui’Drisceoil in Irish, and indeed it was very much part of the O’Driscoll territory up to the 1600s. The population has dwindled, along with that of all the islands, until now there are only about 20 permanent residents. But it’s a popular destination in the summer, with an active sailing school, a renowned restaurant (the Island Cottage) and of course the Bread-Making School that Robert and I attended and enjoyed enormously.

It’s got wonderful peaceful boreens, picturesque cottages, panoramic views over Roaringwater Bay and to the other islands, golden beaches – all this and it’s only a four minute ferry ride to the mainland. But shush – don’t tell anyone else or they’ll all want to come.

Trish is doing a long-term photographic project focusing on the islands of the Wild Atlantic Way and was keen to get back to Heir to capture the views. I had been following a Facebook Page called Heir Island Wildlife Project and had contacted Christine and Sarah, two of the admins on that page, to see if they would meet us when we came and tell us a little about their project. They did better than that, walking the length of the Island with us, and answering all our questions. (Not to mention the coffee and those Portuguese buns!)

I had boned up a little on the island plants, with the help of The Wild Plants of Sherkin, Cape Clear and adjacent Islands of West Cork by John Akeroyd et al, a publication of the Sherkin Island Marine Station that we had visited way back. The book outlines the habitats and growing conditions of the islands, and enumerates the “astonishing” richness of plant species that are to be found on them. Heir is second only to Sherkin in the number of Flowers and ferns to be found, several of which are nationally rare.

The islands ‘specialise’ in heathland species, due to the dominance of open ground, the lack of trees and the broken rocky nature of the terrain. As Akeroyd explains, Thin soils dry out during the summer, thus preventing encroachment by more vigorous species and allowing the plants themselves to die down and the seeds to ripen. Most of this group of plants are annuals more characteristic of southern Europe and the Mediterranean region. . . 

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And indeed what I found was an astonishing variety of wildflowers. When I got home I counted that I had taken photographs of 45 different plants! But that was only part of the wildflowers we saw, since I didn’t photograph everything we came across. Several were new to me, including the Amphibious Bistort and the Pond Water-crowfoot that had arrived unbidden in Sarah’s newly-dug pond.

Butterflies, hover flies and bumble bees seemed to be everywhere we looked. The orange-tip butterfly (the one that loves the Cuckooflower) wouldn’t stay still enough for a snap, but a Common Blue Butterfly with its iridescent wings, and a Cinnabar moth with bold stripes both cooperated.

At the West end of the Island rugged cliffs provide a perfect breeding ground for European Shags. These birds have been amber-listed in Ireland because breeding populations are very localised. Therefore, it’s important that they have found a suitable nesting site on Heir and it’s wonderful to see that this small colony seems to be successfully hatching their young. Looking quite like a cormorant and similar in size, up close they have a striking green gloss to their feathers.

The headland from which we observed the shags provided a carpet of spring heath on which to loll about and admire the views across the Cape Clear and the Mainland. My eyes were immediately drawn down, however, to the ground beneath me. Orchids, Wild Thyme, Thrift, Lousewort, and a beautiful rose-coloured Kidney Vetch provided swaths of pink and purple, while Milkwort and Dog-violet yielded hint of blue and Scurvygrass (Common, I think) rounded it all out with a mat of white flowers.

I didn’t find (or didn’t recognise) some of the very rare plants that grow on these islands, like Wormwood, Deptford Pinks and Spotted Rockrose. Obviously another expedition is called for!

I worry all the time about habitat loss in West Cork. The sound of the rock breaker is a constant in our lives, carving out new fields where there was heath and hedge, and thereby reducing food and shelter for our pollinators and small mammals. I feel despair when I arrive at my favourite place to see a certain set of wildflowers, only to find that someone has been in there with Roundup and it’s now a brown wasteland. Places like Heir Island have a unique opportunity, perhaps even a responsibility, to stay as pristine as possible, to remain an Island Paradise as long as possible for all our sakes. Fortunately, lots of the local residents think so too and that make me hopeful.

A glimpse into Christine’s studio – her exhibitions are always eagerly anticipated locally

Thank you, Sarah and Christine for a wonderful day, and Trish for your excellent company. Let’s do it again soon!