Wild weekends fascinate young, older
Because the 'Wild Weekends' which have been a very interactive part of the Biodiversity Study commissioned by Kilcullen Community Action have especially involved families with young children.
The youngsters not only became immersed in the various 'walk & talk' events, but helped their parents to be fascinated too.
The recent second of the weekends provided three such involvements, and also inaugurated the use of the new Bridge Camphill Farm & Nature Trail, which has lately been developed with the help of 250 Irish employees of Boston-based Fidelity Investments.
On the Friday morning, environmentalist Dr Mary Tubridy, who is leading the Biodiversity Study, conducted the first of the weekend's events, taking the enthusiastic group on a riverside journey, in geological and botanical terms, from post Ice Age Kilcullen to the present day.
Along the way, more recent human uses of the waterway were outlined by local man Jim Collins, whose father maintained the weir which provided him with power for his flour mill until it was broken in 1947.
Later in the afternoon, nature educationalist Michael Jacob conducted a Butterfly Trail in the same area, providing a fascinating expose of the life and importance of a species which has had a tough time of it in the bad weather of this summer. That didn't stop some hardy young hunters from netting a couple of local specimens, which Michael used to show how their age could be determined (by the number of scales on their wings, we understand).
On the Saturday morning there was another excellent turnout for the River Life event led by Dr Jan Baars, who lives in Kilcullen and works with UCD in the area of freshwater life.
After a brief but eloquent discourse on what was to be found in a blessedly clean river environment in Kilcullen, he donned special gear which allowed him to temporarily stun some of the fish life so that it could be examined by those on the event.
This was very much a 'do not do this at home' feature, as special licences are required to use the techniques. But it did make possible a 'hands-on' experience for the youngsters with the fish, and also showed them what the same fish had been feeding on. In the process revealing a wide range of other life in the river. Further along the route there was opportunity to examine specimens of other freshwater life.
Following on from the events of the first 'Wild Weekend', which involved the bats and birds found on the Liffey area in Kilcullen, there's already a very strong local knowledge building up about the biodiversity of life in Kilcullen, long before the Study is even finished.
And it's the youngsters who will probably lead the way to maintaining the diversity of its presence for the years to come.
This article was first published on the Kilcullen page of The Kildare Nationalist.
NOTE: There have been over 37,000 viewings of the photosets related to the 'Wild Weekend' events on your editor's Flickr account.
