Sunday, November 12, 2006

Book: Images of Irish Nature

By photographer Mike Brown, self-published, November 2006. Available in Easons.
According to an Irish Times review, this book is "full of images of dimensions of nature that happen so quickly we rarely get a chance to observe them properly". Many of the photos were taken in Counties Cork and Kerry between 2004 and 2006. His subjects include foxes, the wood white butterfly, basking shark, whitethroat, convolvulus hawkmoth, cuckoo pint plant, otter and hen harrier.
This follows Mike Brown's first book 'Ireland's Wildlife' published in 2004, and his subsequent involvement in RTÉ's Wild Trial series which, with varying degrees of success, challenged Irish personalities to master the art of wildlife photography.
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The island of ireland

Once upon a time, and for 15000 years, ice a mile high blanketed Ireland. When the lingering Ice Age finally released and the Irish ice departed it left a landscape scoured. Across land bridges linking Ireland, Britain and mainland Europe plants and animals arrived to colonise the new lowlands, mountains and valleys. The world’s ice continued to melt, the sea levels to rise, and some 8000 years ago Ireland became the island we now know, accounting for just 0.01% of the world's total land area and the most westerly point of Europe.

Though at Alaskan latitudes, the country's climate is tempered, due partly to the neighbouring waters of the Gulf Stream and partly the prevailing southwesterlies that veering and backing make landfall on our sodden coast. These offerings from the Atlantic mean it is never too hot, never too cold. But without doubt it is wet. Rain lingers year round, never far away, though is most frequent in winter, the western counties and, inevitably, on the day of your parade.