Cygnet wing:
Nature thriving in our absence
WOODS are where nature normally works its magic for Jim Lawlor, but these days it’s the action outside his front door that leaves him spellbound.
A family of foxes that occasionally visited his Dublin garden now make almost nightly trips and will sit on his doorstep to see if they can coax him out with a few titbits.
“They are far more brazen, less fazed by humans than I’ve ever seen,” says Mr Lawlor, chairman of the Native Woodland Trust.
“It’s as suburban as you get here but I’ve seen the foxes lying in the middle of the main road, completely relaxed. I’ve seen cyclists going by them and they don’t even get up.”
They’re not alone in coming out of the shadows. In recent weeks, footage has circulated of a fox window-shopping on Grafton Street and breakfasting on pigeon in Temple Bar.
Together with the images of wild pigs in Paris, deer in downtown Limerick and sheep spinning on a children’s roundabout in Wales, the impression is that nature is enjoying our confinement.
We may be stuck indoors but, after generations of restrictions on where it grows, feeds, flies and roams, nature is escaping from lockdown.
Evidence is underfoot, says Mr Lawlor, who had a Wordsworthian moment when he passed an industrial estate on his 2km walk and found its normally uniform greens a blaze of golden cowslips.
“There are massive amounts of wildflowers around and some I don’t think I’ve ever seen around here before.
“There are pyramidal orchids,” he says with delight. “I’m told there are bee orchids at the Red Cow roundabout.”
The bee orchid is special but it’s the ordinary that is delighting Liam Lysaght, director of the National Biodiversity Data Centre in Kilkenny.
“It’s fantastic the amount of dandelions and daisies there are simply because the grass and verges have not been cut.
“That has a really profound impact on biodiversity. It’s a real benefit to insect life this year which in turn is a boost to birds and small mammals.”
Deer appear to have lost some of their shyness, popping up on Limerick’s Sarsfield Bridge, at Cork Golf Club, on Dunshaughlin’s main street and at Dublin’s Dodder river.
“This time of year young male deer are searching for new territory and we do get reports of them showing up in unusual places,” says Damien Hannigan, of the Irish Deer Commission. But this year does seem different, he says.
“We have definitely seen more road accidents,” he says. “There’s not enough traffic noise to keep the deer away.”
Less traffic is restoring air quality to something closer to what nature intended though.
Satellite images from the
European Space Agency are usually a rainbow of hues with varying shades warning of intensifying nitrogen dioxide (NO2) choking urban areas.
For weeks now, Ireland has looked reassuringly monotone, with just a few spikes, chiefly in Dublin.
Something else is missing from the air – gull shrieks.
Since we stopped leaving the remnants of takeaways and lunch-on-the-run all over the place, urban gulls have had to return to a more natural diet, going back to sea to fish or inland to find ploughed fields to supplement their diet.
They haven’t left for good, however. “They’re very site-faithful so they will try and nest in the same location as in previous years,” says Brian Burke, of Birdwatch Ireland.
Not everyone will be upset by this, he concedes, but having to fly extended distances to find food for the 40-50 days it takes to raise a chick will probably lead to fewer chicks surviving this year.
Karin Dubsky, of Coastwatch
Ireland, on the other hand, is hopeful for a boost for some of her favourite birds. Ringed plovers and rare little terns who nest in sand dunes in places such as Wexford, where she lives, should be doing well.
“They are very vulnerable to human trampling and kite surfers and the like so this year we are hoping that they might have a bumper year because of less people,” she says.
The explanation for the mesmerising footage of basking sharks feeding in aquarium quality water off Co Clare recently is less clear.
Basking sharks are a regular visitor to the west coast and the unusually dry and still conditions had allowed the sea settle to fantastic visibility.
Nevertheless, they were so close to shore in such large numbers that these gentle giants may have been enjoying the quiet from the lack of marine traffic. There is another side to this romantic story, however. Ms Dubsky and her fellow Coastwatchers have been busy logging incidents of dumping and other acts of eco-vandalism.
Tim Roderick, of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, also cautions that human nature can be as wilful as the wilder kind.
“The lockdown is a twoedged sword. There’s less disturbance so nature’s getting a rest but at the same time there may be a certain amount of people taking advantage of the fact that things are quiet.”
He is investigating a number of wildfires while other environmental groups are warning of cases of peat draining, dune damage, tree cutting and sheep getting into areas where conservation projects are taking place.
“Some places need a rest and some habitats need active management. If we just abandoned the countryside to nature, initially I think there would be a positive offshoot but in time what would happen is that everything would scrub up and habitats would be lost. It’s all about striking that balance,” he said.
‘It’s a real benefit to insect life which in turn is a boost to birds’