Happy Earth Day

So HAPPY EARTH DAY… today, 22^nd of April 2026 is Earth Day; a day when we focus on the protection of this planet we call home and all the creatures that we share it with.

Now, if you follow me on Instagram, you will know that I am an animal and wildlife lover… and as I have gotten older, my love of wildlife, has grown and is now something that is very important in my life.

I live with three and a half cats… I explained the half cat before here. And we are now just three cats since our Cat Matriarch, Mabel, went to her eternal reward in February. She was a good cat…. Most of the time.

You probably also know that we have a dog… a large tank of a yellow labrador called Cosmo.

I am lucky to live in suburban Dublin in a house that was built in the late 1960s and so we have a reasonable sized garden. We have lived here for 25 years, and I am ashamed to say that for a lot of that time, the garden was just another job on the never ending To Do list; the grass needed cutting, the beds needed weeding, hedges needed cutting etc. Although I was never someone who loved a very curated, neat, and tidy garden I was regularly overwhelmed by the tasks just to keep the garden from going completely wild.

In 2017 we put a garden cabin in as a home office that I share with himself. Within months of its installation a fox came and gave birth to her cubs in a den she had dug out under the cabin (this was before we had the tank of a dog). So, we woke up one morning about 8 years ago to the sight of cubs playing in the garden. I was completely overjoyed with this developed. And thus began my love affair with foxes to whom I have been feeding supper ever since.

We are our second/third generation of foxes now and my special fox is Gary who is a kind of elder statesman fox now and who will come to within about of a foot of me and we are very fond of each other. They are magnificent, beautiful, gentle animals.

I also feed birds – initially small birds on a bird feeder outside my window… although a recent study by the British RSPB has advised that we should not feed birds on bird feeders between May and October as it causes fatal bird diseases to spread in the warmer weather. They advise that it is better to support birds by planting bird food plants – such as Teasels, Sunflowers, and Ivy. You can read their advice here.

In recent years I have begun putting out bread and other suitable food waste (crusts, potato, rice) for larger birds and have a crowd of seagulls, crows and magpies who dine most mornings on the roof of the cabin. They can demolish food in record time, so it disappears literally within minutes of being put out.

Late last summer we had two hedgehogs visit the garden, which was very exciting. You can read about them here. Despite our best efforts to provide them with hedgehog appropriate lodgings, they opted not to hibernate with us.

We have a pond which we wanted to make wildlife friendly until we discovered it has a tear in the lining (thanks Cosmo) and so we are working on getting that fixed soon. And then maybe we might attract frogs, and other water creatures.

So, I know how privileged I am to have a garden. And I really want it to be a wildlife friendly space. The more bees, butterflies, insects, birds etc I can see the happier I am.

I do wonder though, in 2026, when we know that the planet and biodiversity is in trouble how we have not changed out attitude towards the creatures we share the Earth with. Only this week there was more giving out in the media about seagulls robbing people’s lunches or something. We fail to understand that we have driven seagulls to rob food and foxes to become slightly less fearful of us because they are now more dependent on us for food, because we have destroyed or reduced hugely their habitats. And yet both are regularly referred to as ‘vermin.’

All planning and development should primarily look at what creatures live in the site to be developed and how we can best introduce elements that will allow them to continue to live alongside us. For example, all urban and suburban gardens should be porous… to allow hedgehogs especially roam freely. But instead, most urban gardens are surrounded by breeze block walls that prevent their movement thereby reducing hugely their habitats.

We do have a movement to now mow our lawns in May (No Mow May) to allow dandelions and other early ‘weeds’ (again like ‘vermin’ what makes a weed different from a wildflower?) to grow to support bees and other pollinators in the vital period of early spring.

The tank dog who toilets on our small bit of ‘lawn’ means that I cannot allow the grass to grow so long that I can’t find the enormous piles of shite he manages to dispatch every day. But I do try to keep dandelions around the edges and in the flower beds.

One of the loveliest things about spring is the birdsong… especially at dawn and dusk. I wish, once summer finally arrives, that I didn’t get excited every time I see a butterfly. My childhood was full of butterflies… unlike now. We need more wild spaces, more tolerance of all wildlife and more compassion so that horrific so called ‘rural pursuits’ such as fox hunting, hare coursing and the so called sports of greyhound and horse racing are banished for good.

Yes – these are a tumble of my thoughts. Happy Earth Day.