Paddy Woodworth welcomes the new profusion of Irish nature books, and takes a closer look at two spin-offs from Derek Mooney's radio show
If Irish fauna and flora could proliferate as fast as the books written about them, we would not be talking about threatened species and habitats. The healthy growth in wildlife-related publishing in recent years has produced some real treasures, for professional naturalists and the general public.
Pioneering efforts such as The Irish Wildlife Book, edited by Fergus O'Gorman in 1979, and a much-loved collector's item now, have been superseded by specialist books such as Exploring Irish Mammals (Tom Hayden and Rory Harrington, 2000) and Seabird Populations of Britain and Ireland (Stephen Newton and others, 2004). However, many of the underlying environmental concerns expressed are, sadly but unsurprisingly, similar - loss of habitat, water pollution, and, repeatedly, planning regulations treated the way a dog treats a lamppost.
Then there are books which tread a middle way between specialist and popular, such as the marvellous Flora Hibernica (Jonathan Pilcher and Valerie Hall, 2001), where lavish illustration is combined with a fairly serious primer on the nation's botany. And just one group of insects can now have its own book dedicated to Irish species: The Natural History of Irish Dragonflies (Brian Nelson and Robert Thompson, 2004), in which superb photographs again complement a scientific but accessible text.
Irish bird-watchers are appropriately well catered for, given the popularity of this pursuit. For books with Irish specifics, they can choose between, among others, The Complete Guide to Irish Birds (Eric Dempsey and Michael O'Clery, 1995, now revised) and Irish Birds (David Cabot, 1995, also now revised), both suitable for beginners. Hardcore birders will not go out their front doors without the Collins Bird Guide (Killian Mullarney, Lars Svensson, Dan Zetterström and Peter J. Grant, 1999), which covers all of Europe and has state-of-the-art illustrations.
Growing public interest has also stimulated successful ventures in the electronic media, not such a new phenomenon for those of us who remember Amuigh Faoin Spéir. At present, RTÉ Radio's Mooney Goes Wild is the runaway leader in this genre. Dismissed by some purists as tabloid pap, its breathless enthusiasm and very broad range is in fact leavened with a lot of science. It is both a genuine populariser and genuinely popular, not as common a combination as you might think.
Media breed on media, of course, so now Mooney (and, theoretically, Derek Mooney himself) is germinating books. Complete Irish Wildlife (HarperCollins, €22.20) and Wild and Wonderful (TownHouse, €13.99) are both marketed heavily through their links with the programme.
Complete Irish Wildlife is a curious hybrid, but no less useful for that. The front cover highlights the fact that Derek Mooney wrote the introduction. It does not even mention the author, Paul Sterry, a man who has already co-authored "complete" (they are actually selective, inevitably) guides to British, Mediterranean and North American wildlife, all based on the photo-library Nature Photographers, which he owns.
The introduction is a quick and readable gallop through the Irish natural world, which might stimulate you to look for something more substantial, such as Michael Viney's wonderful Ireland: A Natural History (Smithsonian/Blackstaff 2003). Mooney freely acknowledges the guiding hand of Richard Collins, the zoologist who contributes to his programme, in what he writes. In fact, the publishers invite journalists to interview Collins, rather than Mooney (or Sterry).
Despite this rather odd marketing ploy, this book works quite well as a general guide to everything from fungi to fallow deer. It would be particularly good for someone who is, say, a keen bird watcher, but knows nothing about wildflowers, crabs, or wasps, and wants a handy volume that will quickly identify common species.
The photographs are often excellent, though sometimes inappropriate. Among the birds, for example, all three species of diver found in Irish waters are mainly or exclusively winter visitors, yet they are shown here in their - much more photogenic - summer plumage.
In a book of this scope, seasonal variations cannot all be shown, so that we see the berry of the honeysuckle, but not the flower. Small photographs, too, can hardly render clearly, or even at all, the infuriatingly tiny distinctions between different grasses and sedges.
These are relatively small points, however, against a book that, simply from the rich variety of its illustrations, will lead casual browsers to an interest in areas they had not previously considered. Who could resist, for example, the implicit invitation to search the woods for Witches' Butter, a fungus that might have escaped from Gormenghast, or walk the seashore for Dead Man's Fingers, a coral-like creature "fancifully resembling a decomposing hand".
The grotesque and bizarre in nature has always attracted Éanna Ní Lamhna, one of the regular contributors to Mooney. In Wild and Wonderful she indulges that attraction to the full, but is also fascinating and lively on more mundane topics.
I have to declare a prejudice here: Ní Lamhna's performance on the Mooney's show has the same effect on this writer as culture had on Goering: it makes me want to reach for a revolver, though luckily the off button on the radio comes to hand first.
Many people just love her, of course, but her hearty, dismissive, hectoring tone unhinges me. So it was with great surprise that I found this book, her second spin-off from the programme, both a mine of information and, generally, a delight to read. Maybe there is something wrong with my hearing. If you have a similar disability, skip the first chapter, "A Culchie Abroad" - it's the worst bit of the book - and go straight to the meatier material.
Here you will find one of the best short accounts of global warming you will ever read, and I even enjoyed being hectored about sorting my waste into different containers.
Ní Lamhna not only really knows her stuff, she can convey the essence of difficult and unfamiliar subjects in sentences of few words and words of fewer syllables. And she has read and travelled widely, with reminiscences stretching from Costa Rican rainforest canopy to the Anglo-Irish lady scholar who had a dragonfly named after her. How can you tell one dragonfly from another, Ní Lamhna asked her. "It is all to do with penis size and shape you know," she was forthrightly informed over afternoon tea.
From there, through sexual acrobatics of slugs, to simultaneous broadsides against anti-bin-tax leftists and polluting capitalists, and a merciless account of illiteracy in the modern school, there is enough in this short volume to inform, entertain and infuriate you for a long time. I'll be switching on the radio again next Saturday morning. u