 Indeed, around the North West this Tuesday afternoon, now around 12,000 years ago, the country was covered in snow and ice. Well, it could be covered in snow and ice before the week's out. But anyhow, that's another story. So this was back in the Ice Age and then the weather became warmer and the snow and the ice melted and trees began to grow. And the seeds of trees like hazelnut and oak were brought here by birds and animals across the land bridges, as they were then, from Britain and the rest of Europe. And the seeds of other trees like willow and birch are so light that they were blown here by the wind. Well, eventually the seeds rose and the land bridges were flooded and we became an island. Our native trees are the trees that reached here before we were separated from the rest of Europe. And eventually then people did bring other trees. And I'm delighted that Angus Kennedy from Nature Northwest is here now to talk a little bit about trees and how we should have more of them. And, you know, I'm not saying the whole country should be covered again in trees, but, you know, we could be having more tree cover, couldn't we? We certainly could. Over 90% at one stage of Ireland was covered in trees. And as you say, they're all native trees. I know there was trees that found their own way here without human help. And now about 11 to 12% of Ireland is covered in trees. But even that coverage, that tiny sparse coverage is not native. Only less than 2% of the island of Ireland is now covered in native trees. Your hazels and your birch and your oak. And of course, they're the trees that support so much of our wildlife. They're the trees that our wildlife has grown up with quite literally. Evolved with. Evolved with. So the ants know where's a good place to find some food. The flies know where's a good place to hide. The caterpillars know the good place to hide. So that's why native trees are so important. Yeah, that's it because they're in sync with all of our native animals then as well. And the rest of the native plants. So everything that is out there in those wild places in the little ditches in the little valleys that aren't being nibbled up by the sheep in all the places where native things are allowed to thrive. They've all each and every plant and animal has evolved over thousands of years to have a little niche and to fight a little corner and survive in that patch. And what can we do? Well, I suppose landowners, you know, if you're farming, you've got a weak corner of land or if you landowner and you're not using a piece of land, you know, you can't the idea would be to encourage people to get to to set some trees and to set native trees if they are. Absolutely. And any landowner will tell you any gardener or any farmer will tell you that nature is trying to take over the whole time. And we see examples of that where land has been abandoned for some reason, maybe land was starting to be built on and then it stopped. I am various different pretty tough little plants will come in pretty tough little little weeds as we'd often call them little flowering plants, but they'll quickly be taken over by trees willow trees and birch trees. And sometimes hazel trees as well, they're known as the pioneering trees, the trees that that take over the new frontier, and they're able to grow in very thin soil, very poor soil, very poor conditions, they're able to deal with droughts and deal with a lot of wet. And they improve the soil all the time by every year dropping their leaves. And then those leaves, of course, rot and start building up a little bit of soil underneath them. And then over over a period of time, 50 to 100 years, they'll have improved the soil so much that the bigger trees, the oak trees, the ash trees, the more dominant ones are able to come in. And aesthetically, it's very pleasing as well seeing trees. And then, you know, in places like where there's woodlands and lots of trees, it's great for recreation. Yeah, it's great for us. I am great for our peace of mind. Also great for for shelter in the summertime, great for drinking up water in the wintertime or all year round, one big mature oak tree can drink up to 80 litres of water a day. That's 80 litres of water it's sucking out of the ground. And the ground can't hold that much water. So if you chop down a whole lot of oak trees, or if you've got rid of a whole lot of big mature trees, well, then the next year, all of that water 80 litres per day per tree, all of that water has to go somewhere. And it'll go down here, it'll go down into your lower fields, it'll go down into the river system, it'll go down into our town and whatnot. So for flood control, they're hugely important for nature, they're hugely important for our biodiversity, our native nature, and then for ourselves, for our own pleasure. I know already this year, there's been a campaign to plant trees, and I suppose it's A, about, you know, getting ground to plant them on, and then B, getting volunteers to plant them, because we're chatting about a lot of trees, and the trees can be sponsored and supplied, but it takes a bit of work to plant them. It does take a little bit of work. And just a minute ago, and there was them, community groups, tidy town groups talking about some of the great work that they're going to be doing around the spring cleaning. Those kind of groups are now doing more and more of this kind of environmental work. And they've been supported by various different agencies to do more and more of this kind of work. And it's surprisingly easy to plant a few trees. You can pick up a few of the bare root trees. And bare root trees are effectively, they look like little sticks, they're very young, one or two years old. And they're not, they don't have a big fancy root system as yet. And you'll pick them up for next and nothing, you'll get birch trees for maybe a Euro 150, you'll get oak trees for three or four euros, very, very good price. And they're an easy thing to plant. You don't need to be spending a lot of money on a big fancy tree. In fact, if you spend 50 or 100 euros on a tree, and you might want something that, that owns a space a little bit quicker. And that's fine. But it'll take quite a few years for it to establish. And if you plan to bare root tree, that's only one or two years old beside it, within 10 years, they'll be the same size as each other or much of muchness. Okay, guys, you don't have to go big to start with. So you don't have to go big. There's a lovely concept that the green schools program managers call on quill bug, the little forest. And you see it in various different schools, but it doesn't have to be in a school that could be in for your community group in the little town park or just the corner of your garden. They plant a little mini forest, maybe 100 trees, maybe 200 trees, you'll get them down the day yourself and one or two family members or a couple of friends, you'll get them into the ground very, very quickly and very easily. And you'll reap the rewards forever. Now one native tree, which is fascinating is the the hazel and it, of course, grows from hazelnuts, which they're the seeds. And it's amazing that it does grow from hazelnuts, given how much our squirrels like them. Yeah, they do. And in fact, the squirrels actually help. Because what the squirrels and what the little mice, the little wood mice and the the J in particular J is one of our species of crow. And what they do is they stashed seeds around around the countryside. So they can have a little supply later on. And of course, crows would eat the hazelnuts as well, would they grow? Yeah, very happily. Yeah. Yeah, the J's in particular are well known for stashing of both acorns, hazelnuts and any of the larger seeds. Because as you rightly said there in your introduction, the willow seeds will blow in the wind. The birch trees and blow in the wind, they can blow at least a kilometre. They're tiny, tiny little seeds. They even have tiny little wings attached to them. Whereas the oak tree, the hazel tree, it is a big, heavy seed. So its problem is distribution. And it uses animals to do that. So it produces more foods than the animals can deal with. And the animals then stashed a certain amount of that food. And of course, the ones that are forgotten the way they grow, they grow as new trees. Well, hazel trees can grow to be quite a height. And they're deciduous tree. So they lose their leaves in the autumn. They do indeed. And they really stand out. They're one of the first signs of spring. At this time of year, they're very obvious because they have these lovely long yellow catkins. And catkins, they look a little bit like caterpillars, like long yellow fluffy caterpillars. And they'll be good five, six, seven centimetres long, even longer sometimes. And when there's any bit of breeze, even today driving up here now, you could see the hazel, it jumps out from the hedges and jumps out from the fields. And because all of these long little, like little yellow flowers, I suppose, dangling away. And they're the male parts of the tree. And they are full of pollen. And in the next few days and next few weeks, they're going to be releasing their pollen. And the wind will carry them off to other hazel trees. And those tiny, tiny little red flowers also on the hazel trees. Now you need to stop and have a look for them. So the male and the female flowers are on the one tree? Or on the one tree, which is common for most, not all trees, but common for most trees. And then the pollen from that long dangly catkin will land on this tiny little red flower. It's the size of a match head. If you think of those little red match heads, matchsticks, it's about that size. And it'll land on that. And then if the flower is lucky, it'll mature into the hazelnut. And so it's a conspicuous red colour as opposed to the colour of the catkins, which are kind of brownish, aren't they? Yeah, they're brown and yellow. And they really jump out even going, driving past in the car. You'll notice them from a distance. Whereas the little red flowers, you need to stop. And it's a good excuse to get out for a walk and get out with your family, get out with your friends and stop and have a little look and hold the tree and look at the tree and see if you can find those tiny red flowers. Because those trees were so important to us for so long, up until very recently. It's going to be Pancake Tuesday now quite soon. And a lot of youngsters will be trying to persuade mummies and daddies to buy Nutella and other kind of nut spread, hazelnut spreads. But hazelnuts were a hugely important part of our diet up till recently. If you come across any old farmhouses, any old houses from kind of famine period or before, you will nearly always see hazel trees growing around them. And they as well as providing the nuts, they have multiple stems. They don't just have one big trunk like an oak tree. And those multiple little stems or rods, they were used for broom handles, they were used for fencing, they were used for wattle huts, they were used for all sorts of walking sticks, all sorts of materials up until plastic became prolific. And also used for finding water where there's a fork in them. That's right, it's the hazel rods that are used for the water divination. There's so many stories attached to them from folklore, which just hints at the importance that they had, people really recognise them. And if you go walking and say somewhere like Ards Forest Park, if you go to that lovely walk from Ards Fryery all the way across the coast to Ards Forest Park, that coastal bit heading facing north, you'll see on the steep slopes, you'll see lots of hazel and lots of birch. And there's not many places left in Ireland where you'll see little remnants of ancient forests like that. And it gives a hint to what the very first people that came to Ireland and all the traders that would have traded back and forth between Scotland and Ireland. And of course, Dunigal was such strong links still with Scotland. But that's the kind of Ireland they would have seen when they arrived first. They would have used the waterways to travel up. And our hills would have been covered in hazel and birch along the edges along the coast. Park down at Ards, I would imagine around this time of the year. And when you come back to the car, there's a good chance on a breezy day that you know, the wind screen will be covered in the little little fine bits. The little catkins because they'll start blowing off now very shortly. And they also have little green buds as well. It's another way to help tell hazel. So those long dangly catkins and then little green buds on them. And they really jump out their lovely tree. And a really good source of pollen so very important for our honeybees. Yeah, well, yeah. So a lot of different insects will use them. Absolutely. Now they're wind pollinated. And a few of the trees are wind pollinated. Very soon the willow trees will start having their little fluffy catkins as well. And they're a bit unusual because there's either male or female willow trees, whereas the hazel and a lot of trees have both male and female on them. But the willow trees, you'll see the pollen starting to spread on them. You'll see the yellow catkins, yellowy silvery catkins coming out now very shortly. And the wind helps them as well. But all of those trees hugely important for our insect life, hugely important for all of our native animals. Question for you, please ask Angus why the wind bushes are blossoming earlier every year? Is this global warming? Interesting, isn't it? There's a science or a branch of science called phenology. And phenology is the study of the seasons and when the seasons start and they use various different plants. They identified who is the astronauts in the space station about 15, 20 years ago or so. For the first time identified this concept of the green wave. And the green wave is spring. It's all the buds bursting out and it started already. It started down the south of Europe and it spreads up across Europe. And every day they can see this wave of green colour spreading more and more and more. And of course, some plants are affected absolutely by climate change and they will start to come out a little bit earlier. Whether that's true for wind or not, wind tends to have or the gorse bush, the European gorse, it tends to have a tendency to come out very, very early. It'll even flower in the middle of wintertime. So whether we could directly link that to climate change or not, I don't know. But it is a wonderful tree because it's a wonderful bush. It gives us lots of lovely colour. And this. It's colour the visitors often note. I think we just kind of take it for granted. But if there's a visitor who's new to the country in particular, one of the things that they'll always remark on is the yellow flower on the wind. Yeah, absolutely. And the smell at this time of year when it's starting to flower, because it'll flower throughout the year. But the flowers at this time of year have that really strong coconut smell and it always makes me smile. I remember as a young fella being told about the coconut smell. And I remember thinking to myself to people who live in the parts of the world where coconuts grow, do they recognise that as the smell of the wind, you know? But it has a very distinctive smell. So it's worth crushing up a few of those flowers, watch out for the spikes and the leaves, but crush up a few of those flowers, have a little smell. But very important for the early bees that are going to be starting to come out very shortly. Very important for the likes of Iran, the most common bird in Ireland, which likes to nest and low down shrubs. So the wind bushes are ideal for it. Another question, a bird called the egret comes to Ireland from Africa. I know that they migrate to the southeast of the country. Are there any here in Donegal? There are indeed. And the egret, there's a few different egrets and the one that we reasonably commonly see at this stage is called the little egret. And it's a bit like a heron. And if you think of the big tall gray heron with the big long pointy beak, egrets are kind of slightly smaller version of that and there is white, as white as white can be and black legs. And then if you watch them for a little while, you'll see they have these amazing yellow feet, these bright, bright yellow feet. We don't see that so often because they're submerged in the in the mud in the substrate. They rub away at the mud, the silt in the estuaries. Estuaries is where you'll find them. So here to answer the question, they've been about 25, 30 years ago they were a very rare bird in Ireland. You'd have to go off to Portugal or Spain to see these kind of birds in their wetlands. Now climate change, that's very definitely linked to climate change, they've been spreading further and further north. In fact, I think it was three or four years ago for the first time, one was spotted in Iceland. And it kept going all that way further north. But we will on our bird council on Locks Willie, for instance, which we do once a month throughout the winter is a wonderful bunch of volunteers that count the numbers of birds and see what state the birds are in. We will count many egrets. Yeah, at least 10 egrets along the swilly at any given time in the winter time. So they are here. Just need to look out for you need to look out for them. Go for your coastal walks and go a little bit off road as well. Go exploring and bring your binoculars right then you'll be rewarded. We weren't going to talk about frogs, but the clock has beaten us. So so maybe you'll go back in again and we'll we'll start with frogs. How's that? Absolutely. I posted up about the spring flower challenge. And that's well worth looking at. It's up on the Facebook page. The Biodiversity Ireland, our data centre for all nature have teamed up with the BSBI, the Botanical Society for Britain and Ireland. And they're looking for the very first flowers. So if you spot any of the flowers that are on their list and to them into their into their little sheets, it's a very, very simple way to do. OK, it's a great thing to do. Quite engaged with nature and try to spot the first blue bells or primrose or cow slap, whatever. And the more we're looking for those things and the more we're looking for the hazel, little tiny hazel red flowers where we're leaving our troubles behind. What's the website again? The website is Biodiversity Ireland. Biodiversity Ireland. Yeah. And you'll find it there. And we've posted it on on Facebook. So you'll find it on Nature Northwest as well. OK. Thanks, Angus. Yeah, brilliant. Thanks, Mildian. Enter the Virgin Media Playhouse for unbelievable