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On Sunday May 22nd ‘World Biodiversity Day’ an international group came down to North Wexford to celebrate.

Thirty five visitors came by train, bus and car to N Wexford to celebrate Austrian Maypole day and World Biodiversity Day.

The successful day was packed with little testers and tasters as well as music and shore nature fieldtrip.

The meal started with wild garlic and wild water cress soup collected locally, the salads contributed included the first outdoor lettuce, spinach and lots of herbs and other produce from the Gorey market like local eggs, cauliflower, chutney and nibbles like the new ‘Wild’ apple crisps.

Paul Dubsky, president of the Irish Austrian Society explained that many wild herbs only have a limited season and are used in gourmet recipes for that season on the continent. For example in Austria wild garlic leaves are used in spring soup. The herb is called Baerlauch – the herb of bears.

Nature was introduced in unexpected ways by the first fieldtrip leader Dr Ruth Blackith a zoologist and fly expert from TCD as she advised participants to imagine things from the particular species point of view. ‘Everyone is out to survive’, she said. ‘Think of a mosquito looking at us – so much soft skin and succulent blood’. After this opening of minds, the skies opened. Once the shower was over and a first group photo was taken in the garden, the shore fieldtrip started with everything sparkling in fresh washed colour.

The yellows of Birdsfoot trefoil, Kidney vetch and Wild Radish, merged with the pink Seapink heads to form a necklace around the sea bank. Below that field trip participants walked along the tide marks and found empty sea shells including native oyster, dogwhelk, queeny, mussel and common whelk. Whelk egg cases which look like rounded honeycombs were examined closely. Each little cell houses one baby whelk. Thankfully the whelks had hatched before they were dislodged from deeper water and swept up onto the sandy beach. Kelp and other dried seaweeds and dried starfish between them were being reworked by sand hoppers and flies.

The beach is studded with a few rock outcrops, which provide wind shelter and a more stable habitat than the sand and gravel on this highly mobile beach. Up on the rocks, where the sea spray barely reaches, some looked for the tiniest of sea snails hidden in crevices among the lichens.

The most unusual find first spotted by eagle eyed teenagers were marble sized transparent blobs of jelly on the last tidemark. This was later identified as a type of Sea Gooseberry – Beroe cucumis, a delicate transparent animal which on closer examination is made up of 8 segments. These are swimming combs which allow the predator to move and catch prey as the flattened end opens into a big mouth – see pic.

Back in the garden to debrief and sing. As the Maypole was already occupied by a Blue Tit family, with parents flying non stop bringing juicy caterpillars to their pieping chicks, Nature music was moved a respectful distance, but still kept in the shelter of the trees of White Walls. The folk songs in English and German about birds, donkeys, fish and roses included beautiful solos of Schubert songs by the Austrian ambassador Walter Haag.

Further information: Karin Dubsky 086 8111 684 Kdubsky@coastwatch.org

Organisation and Wild food: Paul and Karin Dubsky

Fieldtrip leaders: Ruth Blackith and Karin Dubsky

Media: yes local paper – the Gorey Guardian edition Tue 24th May 2011.