Heritage & Habitat | The Irish Times

Illustration: Michael Viney

Small woods of native trees are beautiful but ecologically dodgy

Ecologists push for a critical mass of cover, extending and merging existing clusters

Illustration: Michael Viney

The forecasts didn’t get Ophelia quite right

A website to advise the surfers of the world had proved intriguingly reliable until now

The great-spotted woodpecker. Illustration: Michael Viney

Captivating chronicle of woodpecker life

Michael Viney: Declan Murphy’s engaging ‘A Life in the Trees’ the result of painstaking study

The brown hare was first brought to Ireland from Britain for coursing in the mid-19th century. Drawing: Michael Viney

Michael Viney: The false widow spider is not dangerous, but ...

On walls and boundary railings of Lucan’s public park, 54 were counted on one visit in July

Threat of extinction: curlews were on the official Irish list of birds on offer to shooters until 2012. Illustration: Michael Viney

Listening for the whistle on the shore

Another Life: Michael Viney on the Irish curlew’s staggering decline

Animal welfare: pigs like edible, chewable, investigable and manipulable diversions. Illustration: Michael Viney

Happy as a pig on straw: the difference good animal husbandry makes

Bored pigs can start biting each other’s tails. It’s not hard to enrich their lives

Wasps seem to follow population cycles of their own. Illustration: Michael Viney

The wasps plundering resources for native ecosystems

Wasp species common to Ireland are making much trouble for insects and birds in New Zealand

Mweelrea: the first autumn flood in the mountain river snatches at sand on its curve to the waves, mixing old grains with freshly worn ones. Illustration: Michael Viney

Sands of time start to run out: what our building frenzy is doing to seas and lakes

Michael Viney: We are extracting aggregates faster than the planet can replace them

The lion’s mane jellyfish. Illustration by Michael Viney

Jellyfish with sting that closes beaches

Michael Viney: the lion’s mane jellyfish has been medically problematic for a century

Sandhoppers, or tonachán trá: ‘Usually there are a huge crowd of them together, helping each other loyally and stoutly’. Drawing by Michael Viney

‘Small bodies swaying with the vigour of their chewing’

Michael Viney: Sandhoppers are the most prolific animals in the ‘splash zone’ above the highest reach of spring tides, and scientists have been fascinated by their navigational capacities

What makes the stonewort “starry” are white clusters of tiny bulbils studding its stems like star-shaped earrings. Picture: Michael Viney

Michael Viney: Is starry stonewort a native species that knows its place?

Genetic fingerprinting may be needed to trace the stonewort to the reedy channels of East Anglia

Red list: 40 of Ireland’s 244 types of water beetles are at risk. Illustration: Michael Viney

Naming nature’s creatures – great, small and microscopic

Michael Viney: We have never known about more species – and the list is growing

Giant squid: The squid, like the octopus, edits thousands of genes, using RNA, to serve an exceptional and complex nervous system. Illustration: Michael Viney

The humble squid’s extraordinary service to neuroscience

Michael Viney: Everything we know about how nerves work gleaned from squid nerves

Wild yews were part of Ireland’s first forests. Illustration: Michael Viney

History preserved in the whorls of Irish tree-rings

Michael Viney: Stephen Galvin’s work established the long-lived yew as a reliable barometer of environmental change

Red cage fungus Clathus Ruber

Eye on Nature: Your notes and queries for Ethna Viney

Red cage fungus, desert locusts and solitary bees

Eyes on nature: the hairless bumblebee that Tony Mcgaley photographed

Why bumblebees can lose all their hair: Readers’ nature queries

Eye on Nature: Ethna Viney replies to your queries and observations

Paper nautilus: a glossy white fan of a shell, so fragile that the sun infused it, gleaming through every tight fold. Illustration: Michael Viney

On the equiangular spiral and how the narwhal got its horn

Michael Viney: D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson belongs on the same shelf as Charles Darwin

Bracken: a single plant can eventually spread to fill a whole field. Illustration: Michael Viney Bracken: a single plant can eventually spread to fill a whole field – and it is very hard to get rid of. Illustration: Michael Viney

Farmers’ weapons of mass destruction carry cancer fears

Michael Viney: Is Roundup safe or carcinogenic? What about other herbicides?

Eyes on nature: Ulli Peiler found that the regurgitated stuff mentioned in Eye on Nature on July 1st (above; photograph: Vincent Devlin) contained ivy seeds

The regurgitated pink stuff: what was in it? Readers’ nature queries

Ethna Viney on ivy seeds, buzzards, navelwort, beetles and whelk shells

Eyes on nature: the tick that landed on the wild garlic Emer O’Shea was photographing on Lough Erne

Is this a tick, and could it be carrying Lyme disease? Readers’ nature queries

Ethna Viney on ticks, foxes, long-eared owls, mason wasps and silver Y moths

How many must die?: a flight of young sparrows. Illustration: Michael Viney

How many birds can the natural world support?

The brilliant CB Moffat anticipated 21st-century avian population dynamics theory

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