National Biodiversity week - A walk on the wild side

THIS is National Biodiversity Week, and people will be taking to the great outdoors to enjoy nature at a time when, arguably, it is at its best.

May is many people’s favourite month, when we welcome flowers, new life, growth, a lengthening day and hopes of a good summer.

National Biodiversity Week started yesterday, and is Ireland’s contribution to a global celebration of biodiversity — a term that means the variety of life on Earth.

While the term sounds scientific, it’s about simple, important things often taken for granted; about the systems that provide us with food, clean water, fuel, and the abundance of animals and plants.

Events have been organised, but there are things people can do themselves. There’s the joy of a solitary walk, and of listening to birdsong in quiet places, morning and evening. Some people rise at 4.30am for the dawn chorus.

Among the sights is a profusion of bluebells and buttercups and cowslips, reminders of May altars, a tradition, from a more innocent Ireland, still maintained by some people. Forests and woodlands, now ‘greening’ gloriously, have become more visitor-friendly.

Birds are busying themselves with courting, nest-building and hatching. A few friends have reported hearing the cuckoo in wild areas, but we listen in vain for the unmistakable ‘crex crex’ of the corncrake, a lost sound from youth and a gravely endangered bird.

It’s hard to understand why people out walking stick devices in their ears to listen to man-made music. Do they not realise what they are missing by not tuning in to the musical sounds of the natural world, especially at this time of year? The blackbird, a personal favourite, is brilliant and can be heard, and seen, warbling from high branches to attract a mate.

There’s also the lure of the bogs and mountains. Alas, turf-cutters are, like the corncrake, also extinction-threatened, but you can still gaze in wonder at the singing skylark, almost suspended in the air over the peatlands.

Heritage Minister, Jimmy Deenihan, is encouraging individuals, families and communities to participate in the week’s celebration by joining in various activities.

Events are taking place in locations across the country, including national parks. Other features, such as the ‘annual dawn chorus walk’, the ‘native species weekend’, at Dublin Zoo, and a ‘biodiversity experience’, at the Bog of Allen Nature Centre, Co Kildare, should also be worthwhile.

* For details of events: www.noticenature.ie