A COUPLE of weeks ago I wrote about daffodils on this page and complained I was finding it difficult to establish whether the wild daffodil was a native Irish species.
When I mention a problem like this I usually get a solution and, sure enough, a reader, who happens also to be a plant scientist, emailed me a few days later.
He said he’d also been curious about the native status of the wild daffodil for some time but my column had prompted him to do more detailed research. He had delved into the genetics of the plant and consulted sources in the University of Murcia in Spain. He’s too good a scientist to be dogmatic about what he discovered but I’m convinced by his conclusion that they are probably native to Spain and Portugal but not to either Britain or Ireland. He believes they were introduced on to large estates at an early date and then naturalised themselves.
I’ve had some other great emails from readers, including the charming story of Mrs Fox. In December 2009 a tired and hungry young vixen appeared at this reader’s back door. He fed her some scraps and she left. However she returned once or twice a day for the next 15 months, becoming progressively tamer, and the reader had to start buying dog nuts to augment the kitchen scraps. The scrawny animal became fit and strong and even learned to obey commands like ‘sit’ and ‘stay’. Then, about three weeks ago, she gave birth to cubs in an earth a few hundred metres away. She still came for her food, but rushed back immediately to suckle the cubs.
The reader and his family have become very fond of the fox and want to do the best thing for her. But he’s concerned she’s become so dependent on his hand-outs that she’ll be unable to teach her cubs to hunt properly. Should he stop feeding her? I don’t know. Has anyone out there any experience of this sort of situation? I got another email from a reader who had a problem with moss on one corner of his lawn. It grew so luxuriantly that it choked his mower and he found it unsightly. While he was researching ways of controlling the moss a flock of ‘crows’ arrived and neatly removed it all for him. He wanted to know why they did it.
They were almost certainly rooks, the member of the crow family that specialises in digging. They removed the moss to get at worms and other invertebrates in the damp soil beneath it. They may also have taken some of it away to incorporate in their nests. The reason rooks have a patch of bare skin at the base of their powerful beaks is to ensure they don’t get their feathers dirty when they’re doing this kind of work.
Thanks to the reader who sent me the excellent photograph of two goldfinches and a greenfinch on a peanut feeder which brightens up the column today. And the lady from Dunmanway who is puzzled because she saw a pure white heron was probably looking at an egret. If it was a knee-high white heron it was probably a little egret. If it was waist-high it was the much rarer cattle egret. Both species are recent additions to our breeding bird population.
* dick.warner@examiner.ie
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, April 04, 2011
