Winter’s natural wonderlands

‘The world’s whole sap is sunk,” John Donne exclaimed despairingly in a poem that he wrote on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.

But is midwinter really such a dreary season for nature? Donne’s phrase captures both a common emotional response and a botanical truth. The vitality of plants is now at its nadir, for sure, and that does have an impact on our moods. Seen in a different light, however, the winter landscape still offers great riches.

There is a robust tradition of taking energetic country walks at this time of year to compensate for overindulgence at the Christmas table. But what we see on such walks depends to a considerable extent on our expectations.

If you head into the cold thinking, like Donne, that the landscape is all sap-sunk, dead and barren, you may not see very much. If you go out knowing that hundreds of species of very active plants and animals are still out there, then you may discover delights that will encourage you to repeat the ritual throughout the year, enjoying the changes as the world gradually lights up again with growth and colour.

The most obvious, accessible aspect of natural life in winter is the vast number of wildfowl, wading birds and gulls that crowd our estuaries and wetlands.

Opportunities

There are world-class opportunities to enjoy great views of a dozen colourful species of duck, and great flocks of waders feeding or wheeling in the sky, at a dozen well-known sites: North Bull Island, in Dublin, and Rogerstown estuary, just to the north of the city; Cork’s lough, and multiple points in Cork Harbour; Limerick’s city marsh and Shannon estuary; and so on.

The nature artist, author and educator Gordon D’Arcy suggests a less familiar place for winter birds, Belclare Turlough, near Tuam, in Co Galway. These remarkable seasonal (“disappearing”) lakes, characteristic of our limestone landscapes, were once common between Tuam and Galway. Belclare is now one of just two remaining, following decades of arterial drainage.

“It’s only 150 acres, he says, “but it floods out into the surrounding flatlands at this time of the year. It attracts thousands of wildfowl and waders, including several duck species, whooper swans and Greenland white-fronted geese.”

D’Arcy built a hide there in the 1980s, and it remains a wonderful place to observe these birds closely.

Eric Dempsey's invaluable book Finding Birds in Ireland will lead you to the door of this hide and to many other special places for birds. Dempsey's recent memoir, Don't Die in Autumn, is a wonderful account of how he moved on from obsessive "twitching" to share his delight in birds with schools and communities. For a prime winter family excursion he chooses Avoca, Co Wicklow, once best known as the location for Ballykissangel. The settings for the BBC drama now have a rival: the spectacular preroost display flights of large numbers of a magnificent bird of prey, only recently reintroduced to Ireland after an absence of centuries.

“The village at dusk is when we can see the winter roosts of red kites,” says Dempsey. “This is something magical. To see 40 or 50 kites soaring overhead, some flying right over the main street, is an experience that we should all go out to have over Christmas . . . kids, grannies, aunts and uncles. It’s a natural experience to match any in Ireland.”

Plant life in winter is certainly less dramatic than bird life, but there is a still a lot to see. Zoe Devlin's Wildflowers of Ireland website (wildflowersofireland.net) shows what species to look out for each month, with more in bloom than you might think.

Many will be surprised to find that the lesser celandine, often considered the first flower of spring when it suddenly carpets roadside banks in early April, can be found flowering in late December. It has fleshy, heart-shaped leaves and an exquisite yellow sunburst of a blossom. Devlin has found it blooming in damp ditches on St Stephen’s Day. It can be found around Vartry Reservoir, in Co Wicklow, among other places.

She suggests joining the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland plant hunt between January 1st and 4th to find out and record how many plants are flowering in your area. Anyone can play: bsbi.org.uk/new_year_plant_hunt.html.

Identification skills

But Devlin also points out that winter is a great opportunity for testing your identification skills on plants that are not in flower, when all you can find is a leaf or a seed head. And she stresses the opportunity for exploring very common plants such as ivy, and the ecological communities they support through cold weather. Ivy berries are a superfood for many birds, and its leaves shelter the chrysalis of the holly blue butterfly and hibernating adult brimstones.

Peter Wyse Jackson is one of our leading botanists and the author of Ireland's Generous Nature, a cornucopia of stories and images on the uses of our wild plants, recommends a winter trip to Killarney National Park (killarneynationalpark.ie): "With all the rain, liverworts and mosses should be looking spectacular at the moment," he says. To recognise and appreciate the particular intricacies of these tiny plants, you will need a hand lens (see panel) and some background knowledge, but their ambient beauty is available to everyone.

Janice Fuller, an ecologist who develops biodiversity plans for small rural communities, is also primarily a botanist, but for a top natural spectacle in winter she opts for the murmuration of starlings over reed beds in Lough Derg.

As dusk falls many thousands form breathtaking kinetic patterns across the sky before roosting. They are often easily visible from recreational car parks around Portumna – and indeed in many other parts of the country.

She also mentions winter woodlands, where the structures of the bare trees have a distinctive stark beauty.

The best guide to identifying leafless trees, and to the myriad of natural life at this season, is probably still the classic Collins Guide to the Countryside in Winter, by Alastair and Richard Fitter, from 1988. If you can find one, it would make a marvellous Christmas present.

Life through a lens: a tool every enthusiast needs

Seasoned botanists will always tell you that you need a hand lens to fully appreciate the complex and beautiful structure of plants.

But nothing prepared me for what I saw when I splashed out €30 on an LED illuminated lens. Seeing the commonest flower through it was like snorkelling for the first time. It plunged me into an unsuspected universe of light and wonder. The familiar became magical.

This sudden intimacy with the sci-fi shapes and vivid colours of stamen and pistil, the viscosity of fluids, the half-hidden curve of an ovary, can feel almost voyeuristic. Small wonder Linnaeus was censured for describing the sexual life of plants in detail: “nine men in the same bride’s chamber, with one woman,” as he put it.

Then you become aware of the myriad other lives within the flower. Tiny insects, much too small to be pollinators, are doing unspeakable things to even smaller insects. Wildlife dramas you have seen before only courtesy of David Attenborough take place under your nose, outside your front door.

There are fewer flowers in winter, of course, but there are numerous seeds to wonder at, each structure like a cathedral close-up. Go on, spoil yourself.