Froggy Would a-Wooing Go?

A stunning picture of frogs 'borrowed' from this months entry
for the Irish Wildlife Trust's Facebook photo comp. Sorry but
I do not yet know who the photographer was except that it came
 from a group called "In Touch With The Wild".

It is funny how your childhood memory plays tricks on you. The 'wildlife gardeners' in us look forward to that annual milestone which is the frogs spawning in the local ponds and pray once more that they will adopt our new pond. Last year I tried that trick of importing spawn but was very late and was not successful. This year we are delighted to see that at least 3 frogs have found us 'naturally', presumably males, though I have heard no calling yet and we have no spawn. Also, the snow last night has, presumably put things on hold for now. The first we know of this spring happening is usually (sadly) that we start to see road-kill frogs in the lane and I often find myself be-set by an 'ear-worm' of the childhood song, "Froggy would a-wooing go". In my memory this song had the following lines "..and under his arm he carried a bow, for to shoot at the pretty little doe, among the leaves so green-oh". I was always a bit confused about why froggy should be taking his bow when he went wooing, and also why he'd be aiming at deer but, heh, it's a childhood playground/nursery song; it didn't have to make sense. Liz couldn't help me either as it must be a perculiarly English song and she had no memory of it from her Dublin schooldays.

My snow drops 'in the green' arrive
from England in perfect condition.

Of course, these days you don't need to go bothering your aging Mum or racking your brains for childhood stories - it's all up there on Google, so I nipped in just to check my wording prior to posting it here and making a fool of myself. Silly aul' codger! It turns out that I am remembering it all wrong and that I have conflated the beginning of one song with the rest and the chorus of another.

The 'Froggy' one goes

A frog he would a-wooing go,
Heigh ho! says Rowley,
A frog he would a-wooing go,
Whether his mother would let him or no.
With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach,
Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.

(the rowley-powley being a suet pudding covered with jam) This goes on for 12 verses or so.

The snowdrops are quickly planted in our bank.

The 'Leaves so green oh' is entirely free of frogs and the bow was actually carried by a gamekeeper whom, you will be pleased to know, does not actually shoot the deer, anyway.

The keeper did a hunting go
Under his cloak he carried a bow
All for to shoot, a merry little doe
Among the leaves so green, oh

Jacky boy
(Master)
Fare thee well
(Very well)

Hey, down, ho, down, derry, derry down
Among the leaves so green, oh

and so on. So now you know. Pud Lady (Hello Mum!) probably knew this anyway.

A little snow overnight and black clouds promise more
this morning

On the bucket of spawn thing I am actually being naughty (and probably illegal) too. You are not meant to relocate any wildlife but more importantly, the modern ecologist's view is in favour of letting succession happen naturally, letting the first invaders who find your new pond have their day and then get ousted (possibly) naturally as later, slower species arrive. When we created new ponds in the King's Wood forest in Kent it was always tempting to 'scenically' plant up immediately with rushes, water lily, marginals and so on, but the Kent Wildlife Trust and BTCV preferred leaving it. That way the environment was always more varied, having 'new ponds' as well as 'old established' ponds, with one group of specialised species surviving briefly in the new untill they were ousted by the 'old pond' species.

Waking up to new snow from the bedroom window.

Similarly, they (BTCV etc) liked the old way of coppicing, where a few men would only cut a small area each year (known as a 'cant'), rotating round every year to other areas, returning after 15-20 years. This way, in a small area of forest you would have tracts of new cut, first year re-growth, 2nd year, 3rd year and so on, and the species which favoured any one age could easily move around following the coppicers. Now it is done with bigger machines (where it's done at all!) and bigger areas are cleared in one year, so the wildlife has to travel bigger distances to find the next suitable patch. Nightjars were always a case in point. They are a ground nesting bird typical of heaths but used to use our newly cleared cants till the re-growth of the chestnut started to over-shadow them. Bluebells are also supposed to do better in a cyclic management system. Chestnut, when mature, is a bit dense for them but coppiced every 20 years it is perfect and you get those lovely years when the bluebells come up just after a coppicing event, to bright open skies and sunshine.

The sheep and the East Field

Well, our snowdrops 'in the green' arrived safely from Wisbech in England. Thank you 'Anchs'. There was no sweating and no bruising, so well done the post office and the packaging, I guess. These were quickly into the ground on a sandy bank under the larch trees just inside our front gate. The crocusses on the front lawn came up well but took rather a hammering from wind, sleet, hail and rain and are all but over, but will live to fight another year. I was reading Anne's blog where she says that she plants both yellow and purple crocus but that only the purple come up the 2nd year. We seem to be doing slightly better, with some yellow making it. We are pleased, too, that neither the geese, nor the sheep touch them. Even in the snow this morning I noticed goose tracks all around and about, but nobody had walked on them. I don't know why this should be. Perhaps the geese are focussed on eating grass and do not bother with areas which are 'not grass'.

Liz reads out her eulogy to Diamond at the dinner in
Bridport (Dorset). Picture by Sian Lewin

You may recall that Liz is currently off in the UK. She is at a meeting of the members of a chat forum she inhabits on the internet. There are 19 of them gathered for a long weekend of foodie eating, social drinking and healthy walks along the beach etc. They happen every year and the gang call the event the AGM and this one, being the first since Diamond died (she was one of the group) was a memorial to her name. Liz had written a short, entertaining eulogy full of Diamond-style quirky humour and in-jokes. Famously (among us anyway) Diamond's final words that anyone heard were when she saw husband John off at the door to give the dog a walk, she asked "could you bring me back some posh cheese?" The Posh Cheese was so amusingly and typically a Diamond thing that it is remembered with affection and so Liz's eulogy ends as follows.

"Good food, good friends and good times were important to (Diamond), so it is wonderful that, thanks to our host, Deborah, we are able to come together over this lovely meal to remember her. Can I ask you to charge your glasses: the toast is, of course, Posh Cheese."

RIP old friend. Never forgotten.

"Newt Bothering"

Being ardent wildlife gardeners and natural history enthusiasts we do quite like to get involved in local moves to enhance the environment and hence our volunteering to plant some trees towards the 'Plant a Million Trees in a Day' project happening this weekend (assuming the trees get delivered; we are only 5 days out now and no ETA for them at this stage). When Liz heard a call go out on local radio for volunteers to become newt surveyors in County Roscommon, she was in there like Flynn.

The Irish Wildlife Trust do not have the breadth of knowledge on distribution and habits for Irish amphibian species that the equivalent group would have in the UK (although there have been some studies done) so they are still at the stage of confirming distribution of some species, and amphibians being among these.

Their current belief is that there is only one native species of newt in Ireland, the Smooth Newt although there may be an escaped/introduced population of Alpine Newts in Galway. They also believe that there are no Common Toads, and only (widespread) Common Frog and (some) Natterjack Toads in Kerry. I actually think I have seen a toad here, under some plastic sheeting I'd put down as weed suppressant on the allotment, but Liz's Man-at-IWT says it would be 'very exciting' and would need photographic or physical evidence before he was convinced.

Stranger things have happened mind. In the UK, dormouse 'knowledge' was largely based on people re-hashing old books which were already rehashes of even older books. Everyone "knew" that you only got dormice in broad leaved woodland where they needed honeysuckle to bark-strip to build nests. Then we started surveying all around the South East including our own Challock Forest in Ashford and found thriving populations in stands of, for example, Corsican Pine, with nests made from grass and leaves. The 'books' are now being re-written with modern information. That is the plan by IWT for their own species and hence this attempt to recruit a surveyor for every 10 km square of Ireland.

Liz went 'back to school' armed with notebook and pen, attending a session at the Ardcarne Garden Centre yesterday afternoon. She is now an embryonic expert on all things Smooth Newt, distribution, site selection, surveying methods and reporting. Amusingly, as the training session came to the section where trainees would be shown live newts in what the trainer assumed would be a decent sized pond (Ardcarne had told him they had newts) he asked to be shown the pond. He was a bit surprised to be told by the Ardcarne lady that there was, in fact, no pond, only the pools they use to store aquatic plants for sale, and the newts were in those!. The training guy rather disbelievingly went to check with some of the course members so that the latter could 'see the newt in question'. There were indeed newts and the guy was able to tick off that 10 km square on his map but was left wondering how they got there!

Liz came away with a wad of training materials in a posh folder and her own copious notes in the notebook. She will now wait till the training guy (Seán Meehan) contacts her to confirm which 10 km square we 'own' (we are hoping it is this one, where we live, as we can then nip down to John Deere Bob's likely pond down by Lough Feigh itself which looks very promising - if J-M and Em-J Silverwood are reading this, it's the one you guys tried to wade across with John the Bass Player last Summer). We then have to go and do our simple 'Presence or absence' survey a couple of times this year and report back.

As is her wont, Liz has called this activity 'Newt Bothering' and hence my subject header. Lissotriton vulgaris here we come. We have seen newts here on this land, too, especially last year when we were clearing lush, overgrown vegetation and found the species among the grass. We are now a bit more mowed, 'manicured' and short-grass, especially since the advent of sheep and now geese, but we are hoping that the new pond, once finished will be rapidly colonized by newts, frogs and (if that really WAS a toad) toads, too. That'll show 'em!