How clean is the river? Pretty clean, according to the creepy crawlies!

This afternoon, mum and I spent some quality time together in celebration of Mothers Day - by counting macro invertebrates! (Not quite champagne in a jacuzzi, but anyhow...)

Vandalism in the River Field

Our beautiful log seats have been burnt and our armchairs trashed. They even cut down a tree! Someone tell the anthropologists: neanderthals are alive and well in North Kilkenny...

Why illegal dumpers should dump their rubbish on public land

National parks, laybys, viewing points, council-owned carparks, roadsides... any old bit of public land will do.

Why?

The Inchbeg Fishing School website gets a re-vamp!

Check out our sister site, www.inchbegfishingschool.com. I've just given her a bit of a spring clean and thought I'd show her off a bit...

What I spotted this week...

...nature nerd alert! It's been an especially good week for encounters with creatures so here's a list:

little egrets flying, spent salmon leaping, dog otter swimming, black cormorant diving, a hen harrier perching, fiiiive gold rings! oh, wait - excuse that last bit... :P

(ps: major props to my new super-bargain North Face jacket and shearling mittens, which have made the whole spotting business infinitely more snug.)

Bird Watching in Brosna Callows

These photos were taken at Brosna Callows in Co. Offaly. We took a trip out there as part of the Field Work module of the BSc I'm doing in Environmental and Natural Resource Management.

They show Golden Plover and Lapwing flocks, some of my classmates, and a 'no hunting' sign quoting the Wildlife Act (never seen that before!)

Challo Hindustan!

The River Field blog is taking a pause until September while I am in Ladakh, India. If I can get the bandwidth, I'll upload some photos but in the meantime here's a map. I'm at the (A).


View Larger Map

Making coracles

Traditional, ancient river boats and the biggest water-worthy vessel you can make with one ox hide, coracles have been found in river and lakeside communities the world over, from Vietnam to India to Tibet to America to the British Isles. I'd been wanting to make one for ages, especially since I realised I'd be able to go round the maze in one during the winter floods.

River Nore now an SPA

A thriving community of Kingfishers living along the Nore have secured the river's status as a Special Protected Area. According to a 2010 survey, there are now 22 pairs along the main channel between Borris-in-Ossory in Co. Laois and Coolnamuck, near Inistioge, Co. Kilkenny, making it an ornithological site of "national importance".

(Kingfisher photo taken from Birdwatch Ireland website - credit: Michael Finn.)

Peak populations of Mute Swans, Cormorants, Moorhens, Snipes, Sand Martins, Grey Herons and Mallards were also recorded.

SPA status is awarded under the EU Birds Directive, a piece of legislation that regulates the management of habitats in order to protect endangered bird species. The SPA is separate to the Nore's existing SAC status - or Special Area of Conservation - which designates the river as one of 16 priority habitats in Ireland. Both are regulated by National Parks and Wildlife.

Clearing the log jam

On April 2nd, I uploaded a video showing a natural dam forming in the middle of the river. A month later on May 7th, a crew from the Nore River Trust came armed with chainsaws, waders and cameras to help clear it. We pulled out a lot of dead wood and opened up the main channel again. Big thanks to Bob, John and the lads!

Mid March to early July - a very living maze

Then...


Now...

The map...

Puddling - take two

Who knew that finding the right consistency for daub would be so difficult? Too much sand and it crumbles. Too much clay and it cracks. The 80/20 sand to clay rule doesn't seem to apply, so we're on our second attempt (the first lot gave way almost entirely and had to be pulled down) and now that it's starting to dry, crevices are appearing. We hope they're only superficial - winter will let us know, no doubt...

Here are some photos of Clare and Aideen mixing the daub and applying it:

Rainbow-maker butterfly

I channelled my inner Pollyanna with this homemade garden decor...

Early summer in the River Field

A few photos taken this week...

Riverside furniture - a sitter's guide

We like to renew, reuse and recycle where possible here at the River Field.

These little log seats were cut with a chainsaw from an old sally tree we pulled out of the river.

The armchairs, meanwhile, were saved from a slow, dusty death of woodworm and barn mould. They are now enjoying their twilight years on the riverbank, while fishermen and people out for a stroll enjoy them.

I planted willow saplings to wind through the frames, and tomorrow I'm going to shove in some buddlia too to attract the butterflies.

Tree weaving

So I was down at Seed Savers in Scariff, Co. Clare, a few months ago for a willow weaving course and got all inspired. "Work with what you've got!" said the instructor. "Hmmmm" I thought. I'd been looking through fancy books like this one and salivating over websites like this one, but she got me thinking. I've got tons of willow trees at the low end of the River Field just sitting there (well, growing of course, but not doing much else) so one afternoon I took a bit of a figairy, grabbed a roll of string and headed down to tie some branches together and see what happened. What started out as a few simple arches has rapidly evolved into a witchy and magical canopy that I'm weaving as it grows. To add to the atmosphere, I've glued little mirrored mosaic squares to fishing line, tied each end to a clothes pegs and clasped them to the branches. They glisten and twinkle between the leaves in the sunlight. I love it.

Oh my, how she's grown!

The willow maze and dome have taken off in the past few weeks and sprouted 3 inches of new growth. Compare these pictures with the ones in the post below from Saturday April 2nd - quite a change!

Interesting lectures

I've been getting around a bit lately, intellectually speaking, and enjoying the discourse at a series of lectures on and around the concept of climate justice:

This is a video of Mary Robinson speaking on climate justice at the Possibilities 2011 event - she was deadly! G'wan Mary!!


This was a fantastic lecture in Trinity on Climate Wise Women - basically, women (as 70% of the world's farmers) are dealing with climate change head on - and how. We met a lady from Uganda and another from the South Pacific Islands, both of whom spoke of the ongoing challenges they face from rising sea levels and tropical storms to the devastating pendulum of flood and drought. Thought provoking stuff.

This is a link to info on a very interesting seminar at the Royal Irish Academy on the geography of climate justice. Lots of interesting talks from folks across the academic spectrum, from philosophers to planners to scientists.

Messing about in the river...

Here are some pictures of one of our volunteers, Jake, enjoying the first swim of summer. It was boiling hot on Friday - 24 degrees! - so after we'd finished mudding the roundhouse, we jumped into the river to clean up and cool off. I found a tree with an overhanging branch at just the right height to catch on to and float in the current... heaven.

Caught By The River

While I think of it, here's another little something I did a few weeks ago for the wonderful folks at caughtbytheriver.net: http://caughtbytheriver.net/2011/04/caught-by-the-river-field/

New posts on the way!

I've been camera-less lately and have had exams at college too, so the blog has been a bit unloved these past weeks. All that will change soon though! I've got some new posts in the pipeline on puddling, clearing the dam, coracle making, weaving the willow canopy, fishing lessons and - hopefully - otter spotting. Bear with me!

A natural dam forming in the river Nore

Willow Maze

I know it's not terribly obvious from the photos, but these little sticks in the ground actually are a huge and complicated willow maze. Mum and I planted it two weeks ago. It took three solid back-breaking days. They're only just starting to sprout, but when they do, and get a bit of growth on them, it will look a bit mazier... The maze is on a quarter-acre plot (!) and is really difficult - despite planting the bloody thing, we still got lost, and we were holding the map! It should be a lot of fun on drunken summer nights. The paths are wide enough to get a boat down too, so when it floods in the winter I'll be going round it in my coracle (if I get my coracle - please please please!!). Spinnies anyone?

New Inchbeg Fishing School Brochure!

Coming to a hotel/tourist office/fishing shop near you! Erm, if you take it there... Please help me promote the Inchbeg Fishing School! If you would like a few to hand around to friends/family/businesses or owt, please do let me know... inchbegfishingschool (at) gmail.com (www.inchbegfishingschool.com) or you can print them out yourself. Any support greatly appreciated :)

River weed parchment

This stuff is a bit strange. I'd never noticed it before, but then again I'd never torn up the entire bottom end of the field with a JCB before. Allow me to explain... there used to be a pond at the bottom end of the field, but it was pretty useless from an ecological point of view because every year it flooded completely (the water table rises and the river bursts its banks and half the field is under up to a meter of water), meaning that no species gets a full lifecycle and any habitats are decimated annually. So last summer, I decided to fill in the pond and dig one somewhere more useful, i.e. in a place where it doesn't flood. I haven't dug it yet - that's 2012's job. Anyway after the pond was filled in, the whole area was cleared by Tom in his JCB - there are some pics on facebook somewhere - and bare earth was left. After the floods went down last month (finally! The first time since October!) we were left with this odd, slimy pond weedy stuff that promptly bleached white in the sun. It looks like some kind of creepy ancient parchment...

Cloud-gazing dome

So I wanted to make an extra special willow dome, not your common or garden one but one with a bit of je ne sais quoi... so ta da!!! Introducing(possibly)the world's first dedicated cloud-gazing dome. Basically a normal dome, with a hole in the middle made out of old chicken wire than I stuck bits of willow through. The deal is you go in, lie on your back, and gaze up at the clouds while the wind rustles the leaves and the sun comes streaming in etc etc. It looks a bit sparse at the moment, I'll admit, but it's only just been planted so be nice. By midsummer it'll be a big fuzzy ball of green. With any luck!

Flowers in April

I found a few common field speedwells in the corner of a wheat field. The heads had all blown off!

This is my favourite seat in the River Field. I found the Bugles (below) underneath the tree.

This tiny delicate flower is - after much consideration - a Bugle, we think.

Lesser Celandine (above and below) was the first flower out this Spring.

And here's one of the girls that makes it all happen! She's hanging upside down on a willow.