Wild Woods

Wild Woods: the magic of Ireland’s native woodlands

Richard Nairn

Wild Woods is an account of a personal experiment undertaken by ecologist Richard Nairn. Made somewhat despondent by a lifetime trying to influence countryside policy in Ireland, Nairn turned to nature itself for a new shot of inspiration. Using cash from his future pension he bought a small wood on which he could, at least on his own piece of land, prevent what he describes as the catastrophic decline of wildlife.  

In his introduction Nairn lists some shocking facts: in spite of being listed by the EU as ‘highest-value habitats’, Ireland’s special-designated-areas have declined to ‘poor’ or ‘inadequate’.  Almost a third of all species of flora and fauna are threatened with extinction.   Waterways and lakes are becoming increasingly toxic.

It is very disappointing to discover how a country, famed throughout the world for its natural beauty, is creating its own destruction. The gashes caused by the wholesale removal of peat bogs have long been obvious and the preference for coniferous timber trees rather than broadleaved woodland forests can be seen on the slopes of the hills.  But it may be that rather than turning a blind eye, Irish people just have not realised the severity of the situation. 

Anyone reading Wild Woods will have their consciousness well and truly raised.  But conservationists, who are aware of the dangers, find themselves fighting against barricades raised by all sorts of commercial lobbyists.  It is like being in Maze Runner: a series of cul-de-sacs and dead ends. If it is not farming interests it is something else, although it always seems to come back to farming interests.

Ironically the custodians of the original woodlands were planters from the UK who also had the foresight to place and nurse avenues and stands of saplings for the benefit of their heirs.  On their estates woodsmen toiled under the canopies, coppicing and felling, for the health of the remaining trees.  The chopped out logs were used for a wide variety of domestic necessities or burnt for charcoal. Nairn’s research was, of necessity given the history of Ireland, based on the British documents such as the19th century Ordnance Survey maps as well as inventories and journals maintained by the colonisers. 

In his book A Natural Year, recently reviewed in these pages, Michael Fewer complains about the way that, in spite of his repeated efforts, Coillte continued to neglect a pond in the woods near his house.  It was allowed to become stagnant and lifeless.  In Wild Woods, on the other hand, Nairn writes about the recently established, not-for-profit venture Coillte Nature which aims to move towards bio-diversity and ecosystem services.  Nairn finds hope in this national effort and not just because it supported the publication of his book.  He hopes that those of his peers who Coillte Nature employs to achieve their admirable aims will be able to learn from grassroots projects such as his own, scaling up the methodology to sizeable regenerations across the country. 

Wild Woods is not as overtly political as this review makes it seem.  It is in the personal investment of funds and time that Nairn’s manifesto is expounded.  The book is actually about the way he works his muddy, overgrown copse to benefit the plants, birds, animals and insects that inhabit or used to inhabit it.  Structuring the text season by season he relates how he restores and rehabilitates, painstakingly, the bio-diversity that originally pertained in bygone times.  He is passionate about his wild wood.

Rochard Nairn. Image: naturatrees.ie

Reading Nairn’s book is an opportunity to learn, not only what needs to be done across the island, but also how relatively easy it would be to implement some small changes for the better even in a back garden.  And in a time of pandemic the story will communicate feelings of wellbeing just like those Nairn experienced as he tackled a backbreaking task or stood, for long quiet musing minutes with his boots deep in forest mast, listening for the tiny sounds of vertebrate and invertebrate creatures and the whisper of the breeze in the leaves.

Works cited

Fewer, M. A Natural Year. Merrion Press. 2020.

Nairn, R. Wild Woods. Gill Books. 2020.

A version of this review was first published on page 37 of the Weekend section of the Irish Examiner on 30th January 2021. It is reproduced here by permission of the Editor.

A Natural Year

A Natural Year: the Tranquil Rhythms and Restorative Powers of Irish Nature through the Seasons. 

Michael Fewer

Michael Fewer

From time to time I review a book which I wish I had written. But in the case of A Natural Year it is more that I wish I were the author of such a book. I will not say that it is envy, it is just that I would like to have used my years as well as Michael Fewer has used his. I started out well, going on long walks with my parents who taught me the names of trees and flowers. If we did not recognise a plant we would take leaves and blooms home and look them up in books.

That was when I was a child but since then I have let things slip. Woefully. So I am jealous at the ease with which Fewer identifies flora and fauna.

He is really familiar with various types of spoor as well. From looking at paw prints he is able to narrate the behaviour of a fox, showing how it accelerated to chase and nab a rabbit. Then it ambled on.

Not only does Fewer know all these things but he has set himself futher challenges. A Natural Year is located in just two places: Glendoher, South Dublin and Kilcop, near Woodstown in County Waterford. He has got two charming properties, one of which he, as an architect, designed and had built on a field near the sea. That is all quite desirable too.

 

It is fairly irritating that Fewer is able to turn something so simple into such a superb book. There are just 12 chapters, each one named after a month. He starts with January and writes a nature diary. There are a number of entries about corvids. Not Covid-19 but the oscine passerine birds which in Ireland include rooks, magpies, ravens, jackdaws, choughs, jays and crows.

These birds are both highly intelligent and very aggressive. He describes a ‘gang’ of magpies bullying pigeons and a sparrow hawk and a kestrel. They do this in the spinney at the end of his garden. This is a group of mature beech trees planted apparently by Seán Keating.

It is just not fair is it? I can see lovely trees from my kitchen but not one of them was placed by a famous painter. If I see a smallish bird of prey I will say to myself that it is either a sparrow hawk or a kestrel but I have never bothered to find out how to tell one from another. I love corvids but can I say whether that is a jackdaw or a grey-backed crow? I exalted when a pair of goldfinches came to my bird table but Fewer has got three pairs and has even seen a flock of sixty to seventy ‘swooping along, their gay colours brightly reflecting the sun’. And just to top it all he quotes John Keats! In ‘I stood tip-toe upon a little hill’ the English poet writes of goldfinches which ‘sip, and twitter … to show their black and golden wings … and yellow flutterings’.

It is all too much. There are literary allusions in every chapter, beautifully chosen selections from Shakespeare’s plays, or lines from poems by, for example, Auden, Shelley, Hardy and John Clare. As a teacher of English Literature for more than 35 years I could not call to mind such appropriate extracts. Fewer combined architecture with academia before beginning his second career as a writer. Since then he has written more than two dozen books many of which deal with long walks in Ireland and the natural world through which he has journeyed.

Reeling from my enthusiastic response to A Natural Year, I turned to the frontispiece to see who had provided the brilliant photographs for the colour plates and the delicate black and white illustrations. Each bird, each beast, each twig, leaf or blossom communicates the essence of itself. The heron on page 196 is entirely and undeniably an example of the elements that make up that species. It is just so heron-y. Imagine my delight and horror as I read ‘illustrations and photographs by Michael Fewer’. Hats off.

Works cited

Fewer, M. A Natural Year: the Tranquil Rhythms and Restorative Powers of Irish Nature through the Seasons. Merrion Press. 2020.

A version of this review was first published on page 34 of the Weekend section in the Irish Examiner on 13th June 2020 .  It is reproduced here by permission of the Editor.