The title of Michael and Ethna Viney's latest book is neutral in tone, but it identifies something that motivates a lot of nature watching: the desire to have something to talk or write about after the event: "Guess what I saw today!". Even noting the name of a rare bird in your diary has a kind of writerly satisfaction. Since 1988 Irish Times readers have had a forum for their observations in the Vineys' Eye on Nature column, and it is from this rich archive of letters that the authors have compiled A Wild- life Narrative.
The thing that impresses again and again, perusing these chapters on birds, insects, mammals and flowers, is how people can still be moved to wonder in this jaded era by some natural event. A letter from a nun in Galway described a kestrel that had alighted on her balcony, and asked, "Who says there is no God?"
A diver who spent 20 minutes in the water swimming and sporting with dolphins described "the thrill of a lifetime", "the most privileged and magical" episode in his diving career; a boatman who was accompanied for over four hours by a young humpback whale in waters off west Cork reported it as a "most intense and moving experience". And, on a micro scale, a woman in Wicklow watched a caterpillar in her kitchen, suspended from the ceiling as it spun its cocoon, while another in Galway observed the foreplay and copulation of a pair of hermaphrodite slugs, "firing darts at one another from what looked like tiny, male reproductive organs".
If this book is a harvest of observations, it is also a storehouse of language to savour: medick, natterjack, fly agaric, cockchafer, grayling, etc. Each term has its precise counterpart in the living world, and this fidelity of language to nature is beautifully represented in two Co Antrim terms for snipe reported here, the drumming male called "the heather bleat", and the answering female called "the cut peat". Indeed, throughout this fascinating book we witness the care and accuracy of the letter writers as they describe, in reliable detail, a multitude of chance encounters with the natural world, from the suburban kitchen to the western ocean.
There's just one story here from east Mayo that exudes a whiff of folklore: when Annagh Lake freezes over, young men wearing nailed boots are said to chase across the ice after the large pike which are found there. After a few hundred yards, we're told, the exhausted fish are easily recovered from underneath the frozen surface. Maybe I'm a child of global warming, but such things were undreamt of in my philosophy. Still, I'm open to persuasion.
Sean Lysaght is a poet and biographer whose life of Robert Lloyd Praeger was published recently