A sense of wonder glimmers in us all, more developed in those who constantly observe Nature and the seasons and the mysteries of, say, the migration of birds. Many of them can navigate thousands of miles to the same nesting site they left so long before or were born in, using navigational skills that most of us take for granted s "instinct". John Stewart Collis in his autobiography Bound Upon A Course argues that he doesn't give a rap about the various scientific controversies over the origin of species and so on. "It was the fact that the Fittest had arrived at all that amazed me. I ceased to desire an explanation of the universe and would say. . . `I love the miracle and would have it so'."
A sense of wonder seems natural in the child who asks, why? why? why? Well, Tom McCaughren has produced again this year his Wildlife Diary Run Wild 1999, which aims to stimulate young people especially, though not exclusively, to look around and wonder. For each month there is an introduction of a few hundred words, and he has a bird of the month, illustrated with line drawings and some basic information on it. How often, now, have you seen a jay? It is one of the crow family, but can be gorgeous in its pinks and blues. A woman sent a card from Switzerland and, pasted to it, was a small feather, between an inch-and-a-half and two inches long, one side all azure blue and black little bars, from the front edge of the wings. "Left," she writes, "after innumerable bags of peanuts, as an exchange on my window sill". St Brigid's crosses will soon be with us, and Tom tells you, with illustration how to make them out of, believe it or not, "nine pieces of straw, the same length and string. There are homely touches about the swans on the Grand Canal in Dublin and some interesting thoughts about bats. They may live, he tells us, up to thirty years. And Dubliners will be interested to read that there were plans, at the time he wrote this, to put up a hundred bat boxes in the Phoenix Park. You won't mistake them for bird nestboxes, if they go up, for there is no hole in the front. Presumably it's underneath. He tells us that a tiny pipistrelle bat, weighing "no more than a five pence piece, may catch over three thousand midges and other insects in a single night." What does it weigh then? For young and older, from Wolfhound Press; costs £4.95. Neat pocket size. Y