Panel: Richard Collins, Éanna Ní Lahmna & Niall Hatch

Reporter: Terry Flanagan

In addition to listening to us on RTÉ Radio One at 22:00 every Monday night, don't forget that you can also listen back to each of our programmes any time you like at www.rte.ie/mooney. There, you will find an extensive archive of past broadcasts, conveniently split into different topics and segments.

Tonight’s programme features a special report on one of Ireland’s best-loved flowers, and a well-known harbinger of spring: the delightful snowdrop. There are a great many different varieties of this prized flower, with so-called "galanthophiles" taking great interest in collecting different cultivars and breeding new strains.

To help you learn more about the wonderful world of snowdrops, our recommendation this week from the extensiveMooney Goes Wild archives is a report that we originally broadcast in February 2024. In it, our Researcher Michele Browne visits the 40-acre Altamont Gardens near Tullow, Co. Carlow, where she speaks to plantsman Robert Millerabout these beautiful flowers, including some particularly grumpy-faced ones!

To listen to this programme from the Mooney Goes Wildarchives, visit https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/22355469-grumpy-snowdrops/

Happy New Year

As this is our first new Mooney Goes Wild programme of 2025, we would like to start by wishing each and every one of our listeners a very happy New Year! This year marks the programme’s 30th anniversary, so be sure to stay tuned for plenty of nature-themed surprises and celebrations in the weeks and months to come.

Over the recent festive season, our team produced a pair of special documentaries as part of our Nature on One series. OnChristmas Day, Derek Mooney and Niall Hatch brought listeners Pope Leo’s Elephant, all about the arrival of an Asian Elephant called Hanno to Rome in 1514, a gift to Pope Leo X from the King of Portugal, and the remarkable and enduring bond formed between the pontiff and his pachyderm.

Then, on New Year’s Day, Richard Collins told the tale of another remarkable elephant, who in 1872 spent ten days walking from Edinburgh to Manchester and, so the story goes, found a unique solution to overcoming a barrier along the way, in a documentary called The Disputed Toll.

As an added bonus, 30th December saw our Winter Birdsspecial, an ambitious two-hour live broadcast all about the waders and the garden birds which thrive in Ireland during the coldest months of the year. Featuring Derek Mooney and Richard Collins in studio, Jim Wilson in his garden in Cobh, Co. Cork, and Terry Flanagan and Niall Hatch speaking to some special guests at Dublin’s North Bull Island, it turned out to be a great success.

To listen back to any of our recent programmes that you may have missed, please visit https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/mooney/clips/

Here Comes the Sun!

In 1969, George Harrison, the so-called "Quiet Beatle", composed one of the band’s most popular and enduring songs, in celebration of the arrival of spring and the promise of better days to come. Today, Here Comes the Sun is the most streamed and downloaded Beatles song of all time, its pretty melody and uplifting message continuing to resonate with new generations of listeners many years after the band’s demise and Harrison’s death.

But why are we playing it at the start of tonight’s programme? Well, as Éanna informs us, it may have (as the song goes) "been a long, cold, lonely winter", but the good news is that the season of spring officially sprung in Ireland on 1stFebruary. Even though the chilly weather is not quite behind us yet, the amount of daily sunlight has increased and soon the birds, bees and flowers will have reproduction on their minds . . . indeed, as we hear tonight, some already do. Maybe that should be "Here Comes the Son"!

For more information about the season of spring, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_(season)

Proud as a Peacock: looking at mating displays in the animal kingdom

On a recent visit to Portugal – while strolling in the grounds of Lisbon’s St. George’s Castle, no less – Derek spotted a sure sign that spring was in the air, as this video he took shows. In it, you can see a Peacock – or a male Indian Peafowl, to give him his formal title – strutting his stuff in front of a distinctly underwhelmed group of females.

The extremely elaborate, eye-spotted display feathers of the Peacock (which, despite what most people assume, are not actually his tail feathers: technically they are his upper tail coverts, which drape over his real tail feathers) have been honed by millions of years of evolution with one goal in mind. The purpose is to woo females who are genetically predisposed to want to mate with males who have the most ornate plumage and expend the most energy in trying to impress them.

They are not the only members of the animal kingdom to engage in elaborate and, dare we say, macho displays in order to get female attention: far from it. As we hear on tonight’s programme, the phenomenon known as sexual selection has resulted in the evolution of countless flashy performances by many male birds, mammals and other creatures, often to the detriment of their own survival but to the potential benefit of their genetic legacy.

For more information about Indian Peafowl, visit https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/indian-peafowl

For more information about sexual selection and its evolutionary effects, visit https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/sexual-selection-13255240/

Celebrating Snowdrop Month

February is often referred to as "Snowdrop Month", as it is the time of year when, after a long, cold, wet winter, these delightful flowers burst forth from the soil or even the snow,marking the arrival of spring.

Burtown House in Co. Kildare is the only original Quaker House in Ireland that is still occupied by the family that built it. It is now surrounded by 10 acres of lush flower, vegetable and woodland gardens. Each February, those gardens come to life with spectacular shows of snowdrops, aconites and many other spring flowers. The gardens are open to the public and well worth a visit.

Recently our roving reporter, Terry Flanagan, paid a visit to this beautiful old house, close to the village of Ballytore, where owner Leslie Fennel brought him on a tour of the woodlands and the family’s massive snowdrop collection.

For more information about Burtown House and Gardens, and to plan your own visit, see https://burtownhouse.ie/

Humpback Whale makes a journey spanning three oceans

A recent study revealed that a male Humpback Whaletravelled a record-breaking distance, spanning three oceans, in order to find a mate, raising the alarm about how climate change may be affecting the migratory behaviour of thesemassive denizens of the deep.

Researchers first spotted the whale in 2013 in the East Pacific Ocean near Colombia, then photographed it again in 2022 in the southwest Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa, near the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar. The distance between the two points is roughly 13,000 km – nearly one-third of our planet’s surface – and represents the longest recorded distance between sightings in different breeding areas for this species.

On tonight’s programme, we speak to Patrick Lyne, a chartered marine scientist who works with the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, to find out more about the mysteries of Humpback Whale migration, how climate change is impacting these fascinating creatures and just why this particular individual may have made such an unprecedented journey.

For more information about Patrick Lyne and his work, visit https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Patrick-Lyne

For more information about Humpback Whales, visit https://iwdg.ie/humpback-whale/

Ceramic Swallows in Lisbon

On his recent trip to Portugal, Derek noticed a striking ornithological motif while waking the streets and browsing the shops of Lisbon: lots and lots of ornate ceramic Swallows. These migratory birds have long been a symbol of fidelity, hope and prosperity to the Portuguese, and on tonight’s programme our panel delves into some of the reasons why this is the case, as well as the impressions that Swallows have left on culture, on society . . . and even on people’s skin!

For more information about Swallows, visit https://birdwatchireland.ie/birds/swallow/

For more information about the significance of ceramic Swallows in Portuguese culture, visit https://portoalities.com/en/why-are-there-ceramic-swallows-hanging-on-the-walls/