Anja Murray: Connect with nature's frog routes and polka-dot newts with new book

The wondrous webs of life that sustain us are celebrated in Anja Murray's latest book on the treasures of Irish nature

Sun, 12 Oct, 2025 - 06:05

Caroline Delaney

Sometimes 'being connected' is all about who you know and what they can do for you. The concept has become tainted by brazen business deals and parochial politics. But in the purest possible way connections are also at the heart of a new nature book out now.

The connections examined and celebrated in Frog Routes, Polka-Dot Newt and other Treasures of Irish Nature are the connections between everything from microscopic organisms to fungi, birds and butterflies — and ourselves too.

"Soil is the stuff of life itself, bustling with microbes, fungi, beetles and earthworms. Ferns, primroses, wild violets and canopy leaves are the framework for the hidden power behind a butterfly’s wing or the singing of a wren."

Author Anja Murray notes that "every different species is part of an interconnected web of life, you know, every creature depends on lots of other species, including us. Without healthy ecosystems, we don't have air to breathe, we don't have clean water, we don't have all of the resources that we depend on for everyday lives. You know, soil is a living thing. It's full of millions of different types of organisms, from the microscopic up to the earthworms."

Murray, who writes a weekly column for the Irish Examiner's Outdoors section has always been interested in nature and has a solid background in this field. She studied environmental science and plant ecology which she "absolutely loved".

"Learning about the connections between geology, soil, atmosphere and water; for example how a river is shaped not only by rock chemistry and climate but also by the communities of organisms that shape each environment. A lot of the degree course looked at the connections between each element of the environment."

After that she worked in landscape scale habitat mapping, before doing hedgerow research projects across the country. She moved into policy and conservation when she says she realised that research is not enough: "There is a real urgency to help decision makers understand the physical parameters and limits of the environment."

Anja Murray recording some sounds of nature for Nature File

Murray worked as an expert presenter on Eco Eye on RTÉ 1, has made many radio documentaries, and presents a weekly Nature File on Lyric FM, which inspired this book. Her critically acclaimed first book Wild Embrace: Connecting to the Wonder of Ireland’s Natural World was a bestseller.

'If you see it you can be it' is a saying about positive role models that can be adapted to an appreciation of the natural world. 'If you see it, you'll learn about it, and if you learn about it you'll want to mind it' seems to be a core tenet of Murray's latest book.

She agrees: "I feel it is the case that we are unlikely to truly respect, care for and defend that which we do not know and love. I have always worked to bring the perspectives of wild creatures to listeners or readers."

Some of those wild creatures we learn about in this book include wood mice who look after their own connections by "using sticks, stones and shells to make signposts for themselves" to a grove of fresh bluebell shoots for a fresh spring feast.

The frog routes of the book's title relate to frog-mating season which is typically at the beginning of February. Frogs then stay connected to their roots and follow "the very same routes their forebears followed for generations, through wet ditches, streamsides and damp fields, tracing their way back to the very same pond, bog pool, wet ditch or lakeshore where they began life".

And while we are all fairly familiar with frogs and frogspawn from school nature tables or garden ponds or rural hikes, our polka-dotted newts may be more novel. Indeed it's not surprising many of us are not familiar with them when even the folk who gave them their Irish name might have been confused by them. Murray explains: "Smooth newts are one of Ireland's three native species of amphibian, known in Irish as 'earc sléibhe' which means 'mountain lizard'. But newts are not lizards. Lizards are reptiles and newts are amphibians, so they belong to a totally different class of animal."

We only have one type of newt here anyway — the official name is 'smooth newt' — and the polka dots are another way of making connections. In the spring the male smooth newts change their appearance to attract a mate. "The spots on their skin grow bolder, their bellies turn bright orange, and they develop a wavy crest along their back and tail." To a female smooth newt, a male with these attributes is "a pleasing sight".

I have to ask... has Murray seen every species and type of creature living in Ireland now?

"Oh I definitely haven't seen everything in Ireland. My goodness, I'd love to see puffins and Manx shearwaters. I have seen them from a distance but is plenty more I'd like to see. I always only catch a glimpse of otters. I guess I have been lucky with things like so many years with Eco Eye that I have gotten to see things like Kerry toads and the white-tailed eagles. I have been quite lucky in that. I don't think I have ever seen a chough — they're one of the crow family and they have a red beak. Their numbers not doing to well but west Cork is a stronghold for them."

"Oh I have not seen cranes — they are only back in Ireland two years. They are now nesting on midland bogs. And even if you only catch sight of something once or twice the more times you see it is amazing."

She notes that it's the interconnectedness of all these creatures that really is their value, not what an individual species can do for us. And Murray recognises that knowing about our own animals, birds and insects will ultimately mean more care taken of our environment: "We're not very good at protecting what we don't know and what we don't love."

"I think it's a very myopic view to think 'is it going to cure cancer?'. Every different species is part of an interconnected web of life. Every creature depends on lots of other species, including us. Without healthy ecosystems, you know, we don't have air to breathe, we don't have clean water, we don't have all of the resources that we depend on for everyday lives. You know, soil that our food comes from is a living thing. It's full of millions of different types of organisms, from the microscopic up to the earthworms. And I have a piece in September all about soil, and earthworms in particular, and earthworms as a geological power."

These connections are what benefit and literally sustain us and Murray is passionate about trying to get individuals and governments and corporations to appreciate this: "It shouldn't be just hard science and facts and figures of how dependent we are on nature or how much a particular species is declining. I think there should be an appreciation of how every single organism is amazingly adapted to their particular niche. How they've traits and abilities which are just incredible to learn about. You know it's inspiring, and to know that that's because every single species is so so tightly dependent on each other, and they are not just shaping each other's lives — they're changing every part of the surface of the earth."

"Every part of the surface of the Earth is how it is, because of the life forms have made it that way. So coming back to soil or the chemical composition of the atmosphere... the reason why we have the perfect amount of oxygen in the atmosphere for us and other mammals to breathe is because plants have made it so, you know, the engineering of every aspect of this planet is because of healthy ecosystems which have iteratively evolved over time. And they've collectively made earth so perfect with such perfect conditions for us. When you take one piece, one species out of that, things start to collapse. You take two, three, four species out, things really collapse. We really we don't realise our current society doesn't realise just how dependent we are, in obvious and less obvious, ways on nature, on every single species, kind of work, working together. And, you know, we just, we don't value this non human life properly, and that's a very recent phenomenon."

And while there are environmental wrongs and disasters, Murray is also keenly aware of the good work being done by conservation initiatives and Tidy Towns groups and individual positive contributions.

But she doesn't want to focus solely on personal responsibility and "individuals feeling guilty because they haven't done enough when it's "the system that has to change". "That's businesses and government. You know, we live in a democracy. We can turn this around. So it's our public awareness and public perception, and it's the collective. It has to be a policy and a collective reorientation of our of our values."