"You were writing about the lime trees and chestnuts that do so much to enliven the main route through the Phoenix Park", he said. "But there is so much else to be written about in that wonderland. Quite apart from the eminence of some of its residents, including our President, it is a considerable part of Dublin life through its sporting grounds: polo, cricket, football. And above all it teems with wild life." True enough, a small, excellently produced and decently priced (at £2) booklet from the Stationery Office Nature in The Phoenix Park referred to here before reminds you what lies at our doorstep. Take the fallow deer. They've been Dubliners since 1662. Brought by the Duke of Ormond in the reign of Charles II. At one time the herd totalled almost 1,300. During the second World War they were reduced to 40, but now stand at around 450. Interesting sex note: "Normally three or four bucks succeed in carrying out between 70 percent and 80 percent of all the matings." The booklet notes solemnly that in the 1988 rut the buck known as "Wellington" was at the top of that table. Terrible groaning from the bucks, it seems, in the process. If you get near enough to read the ear tags on the deer, their colour gives their birth year. (Mind you this booklet dates 1993.) There are foxes around, mostly to be seen at night and many of them, as do the badgers, keep to the safe enclosures of the Aras and the American Embassy.
Ah, the poor red squirrel. The last recorded sighting of the red squirrel was on St. Patrick's Day 1987, and the first recorded sighting of the grey squirrel was in Aras an Uachtarain in 1978. Experts tend to say that the Grey squirrel is not driving out the red, but a man who covers a fair amount of territory, angling or just wandering, says he hasn't seen a red for 20 years - apart from one in a suburban garden in Geneva. And it was a very dusky red. No, the experts tell us, the grey is not driving out the red. They may be dying out for some other reason.
You name the beast, the Park has it. That is, hares apart. Dogs get them. But rabbits, stoats, various kinds of bats. Otters occasionally in the Glen Pond area (by the way, there's a fine map). Mink, unfortunately. Various baths, Pygmy shrew. Hedgehogs are not common, but mice of various kinds. As to the bird life, as you might expect, there is plenty. Something over 60 different species. It would take columns to do justice to this colourful pamphlet. From Government Publications Sales Office in Molesworth St., Dublin. Y