Bottlehill Forest Is A Great Place To Listen To Bird Song. But It Shouldn’t Be.

One of my favourite places to listen to bird song, and record bird song, is Bottlehill Forest (I’m not sure if that’s even the exact name of the place, but that’s what I’ve come to know it as.) Some of my clearest recordings of robins and chaffinches were recorded there. And now I look forward to my next trip up there. It’s so quiet. And so tranquil. The sound of road noise can’t get anywhere near my hyper sensitive ears when I’m walking through that forest. All I can hear is the wind, the beautiful sound of the wind, and the lovely sound of birds singing, the magnificent sound of other minds. It’s paradise!

But hold on a sec! We need to pull the breaks, and examine these thoughts! Because the fact that I view Bottlehill this way, as a lovely place for encountering birds, is wrong. In fact, it’s completely fucked up Timothy! (I don’t know who Timothy is.) I do find Bottlehill to be a nice get away from urban noise where I can hear a robin or a willow warbler singing their little hearts out. But I shouldn’t regard Bottlehill this way at all. And the fact that I do, the fact that I eagerly pack my Tascam recorder and cycle off to Bottlehill, is a sad, sad reflection of the fact that….

Ireland has completely and utterly murdered the natural environment.

So, first off, what is Bottlehill forest? Well, for one thing, it was going to be the site of a new dump. You can actually go and have a look at the infrastructure for the landfill which is right in the middle of the forest. But, despite the dump being fully built, that project fell through, and there’s been a continuous debate going on for the last twenty years about what should happen with Bottlehill:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-40998269.html

I actually really like Bottlehill, I make a point of making at least two cycling trips there a year, this being my tenth year of going there. I usually do much less cycling trips in the Winter, so when Spring comes around again, a cycle to Bottlehill is my “get back into it cycle.” It’s a round trip of around twenty miles, and the trip back is mostly downhill so I can cycle really fast, WEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

I enjoy Bottlehill as a nice, quiet place to go for a walk, where you can really get lost in the woodland and know that you are very far from urban noise and traffic. In a place like Bottlehill, you realize how beautiful the wind sounds, because it’s so quiet, that that’s one of the few things you can hear. But there’s something you need to know about Bottlehill Forest, and that is…….

The word “forest” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. A quite severe amount of heavy lifting. I’m genuinely worried that the word “forest” is going to have horrendous back problems by the time it’s 30.

Because it’s not really Bottlehill Forest, it’s Bottlehill Coilte Plantation. Coilte is an organization responsible for “reforesting” Ireland, after many centuries, arguably millennia, of deforestation. The Irish sure loved cutting down trees. And when the British Empire was here, they sure loved cutting down our trees. And when Ireland gained independence, the Irish regained their taste for cutting down trees.

What have people got against Irish trees? Is this country’s fate to have a landscape that’s as bald and barren as my scalp?

So, Coilte came along and started planting a load of trees. So, they’re the good guys, right, right? Coilte are like, the Jesus of trees, surely?

I’m afraid it’s not that simple. And by not that simple I mean, no, Coilte are not the Jesus of trees.

Have a look at this video by Kev Collins, I think he makes a really good argument that Coilte, is in fact, the Judas Iscariot of trees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCXPZNMDbDw

Coilte are the inevitable result of what has been the Irish government’s approach to “nature” for decades. “Yes, trees are lovely and all, but can we make a profit out of them?” It’s an attitude that our beautiful landscape has no value unless money can be made off of it. Who cares if rivers and lakes and forests and mountains are good for animals and for the well being and mental health of humans, if it’s not making us some cash, it’s worthless! Look, there’s a river there that isn’t generating any money, let’s go and shout abuse at it, stupid river!

But, the fact that I was born into a country where fake nature that generates profit is more important than actual nature, has actually warped the way I feel about things. Let me explain.

This is a blogpost I wrote about a cycling trip to Corrin Hill last year.

Am I Getting Older Or Are the Hills Just Getting Steeper?

If it’s a case of too long didn’t read, I’ll just copy and paste in the relevant part of it.

“But this time I wanted to explore the parts of Corrin Hill that I don’t see as often, so I went into one of the beautiful forests that are on Corrin Hill. This kind of forest I like, where the ground beneath your feet feels like a soft carpet that you could walk on all day.”

I want to stress that I wrote this AFTER it had been explained to me the harm that Coilte forests were doing. I found joy in the softness of the ground, and the soft light you get in a woodland as the sunshine tries to peak through the trees. I was happy, and content, and joyful, in a place where nature had come to die. I was in my element in an area that was a monument to the shameful practice of destroying nature for profit.

So, back to Bottlehill. Yes, part of why I find such joy there, is to do with how my perception of what escaping into nature looks like and feels like has been warped by decades of experiencing trees as nothing but unrepentant capitalism. But, here’s the thing. Bottlehill IS quiet. Have a listen to some of these recordings I took there:

https://xeno-canto.org/1005531

https://xeno-canto.org/1001086

The first recording is a robin, the second is of two chaffinches. The only things that are competing with these birds are a bee, the sound of the wind, sounds I’M inadvertently making, and the Tascam occasionally making a noise. (This happens when I accidentally have the Tascam too near to my phone.)

So, what’s the problem? I have a nice, quiet place for going to listen to birds singing. Isn’t that a birder’s dream?

The problem, is that only the hardiest birds can survive in a dead zone like Bottlehill “forest.” Granted, I was surprised by the amount of birds I encountered given what it is. Plenty of robins, though they’re adaptable and can survive pretty much anywhere, chaffinches, at least one cuckoo, and willow warblers. But I didn’t even encounter a blackbird in Bottlehill. A blackbird, they’re iconic birds and I haven’t encountered any in Bottlehill!

Are there better places for birdlife than Bottlehill? Are there places with beautiful trees, and lovely vegetation, where there’s no Coilte zombie trees to be seen?

Sure there is. One of my favourites is the Glen River Park. And because it’s near my house, it’s where I do most of my birding.

As the name would suggest, there’s a lovely river flowing through it. Beautiful trees, there’s even small woodlands there. What I think is lovely about it, is that there are even places that are just for the birds, not for human benefit as such. Very thick vegetation that’s hard for humans to get through, so it just ends up as a place for birds to make a home. While getting to know our wonderful bird species should be encouraged, it’s important to realize that it can’t be about humans all the time, and it can be good to have nice, safe areas for birds even if humans don’t benefit from it.

The Glen River Park has mallards, herons, teals in the Winter, buzzards, robins, blackbirds, blue tits, great tits….

5 hours later……

egrets and recently it’s gotten the lovely addition of a sedge warbler. So, problem solved, right? Shouldn’t I just do all my bird recording in the Glen River Park?

Well, I do most of my bird recording there, but, the Glen River Park is surrounded on three sides by a busy main road. It’s only really in the center of it that you can get away from road noise. It’s also a fairly small park, so that finding a part of the park that has few people in it can be difficult. It often happens that my bird recordings are frustrated by the sound of people talking. And this isn’t a criticism, people have every right to use our public parks for socializing, and that’s how I often use them myself, but my point is, Bottlehill is so huge, that it’s easy to just find a part of it where’s there’s no people, so you can get very clear bird recordings without there being a conversation going on nearby.

What other places are good for encountering birds? The Lee Fields? Near a busy road. What about The Lough? The Lough is a wonderful place for encountering aquatic birds, but, again, near a busy road.

What about the Courtmacsherry Estuary? Surely, in West Cork, a rural area, the Courtmacsherry Estuary should be…..

Think again. Say it with me now. NEAR A BUSY ROAD.

So, those are your two choices as a bird enthusiast. A place full of beautiful nature where the noise will tear a hole in your skull, or a quiet dead zone.

So, in the context of our current society, Bottlehill is a great place for listening to bird song. But it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be the case that we think, “I can’t deal with all this noise while I’m recording birds, but do you know, there’s a great ecological dead zone where I can get some really good recordings!” Bottlehill is so big, that you forget that a somewhat busy, though not the busiest, road, passes right by it. Bottlehill is also so big that, while loads of people like to visit it, there is a good chance you won’t encounter any of them, so you don’t have to worry about other people laughing and being joyful and engaging in merriment while I’m trying to record a cuckoo.

We should have places that have the beautiful nature of the Glen River Park, that are as big as Bottlehill, or bigger. Giant, silent areas where we can escape into NATURE, not areas of death and barrenness created for profit. And if we achieved this, Bottlehill, if it still existed in its current form in such a society, would be a place I would no longer regard as a great place for recording birds. My perception of what nature is would no longer be warped, and I would properly regard Bottlehill as the place of waste and decay that it is.