WHEN Tom Doyle walks through the fields of Colin Mountain, he’s as much a part of it as the rabbits and the butterflies and the birds.
The creatures of the mountain know him and trust him, as well they should after more than a decade walking among them almost every day. Sometimes he brings his pet dogs – but he won’t let them catch a rabbit.
“I see them as my rabbits and I won’t harm them, I won’t let anything come to any harm here,” he says. In fact, numerous rabbits just sit out on the grass as he passes by.
“People go on holidays to Spain, getting stuck in airports, but I never want to go anywhere else. It’s my oasis and I love it with all my heart,” he said.
UNDISTURBED: A meadowbrown butterfly bathes in the sunshine
It may be just a couple of miles outside Belfast, but this is the countryside of yesteryear. When Dúlra saw it for himself this week, he immediately knew how Tom’s heart had been stolen. It was pristine wilderness of the type that has largely disappeared during our lifetime. When Tom rang Dúlra last week, it wasn’t to report a rare bird or animal as many readers do, but to invite him to see the very land itself.
“It’s a meadow like they used to be,” he said, “full of butterflies and grasshoppers and insects and birds. I’m the only one who visits it. You’ll have to see it to believe it.”
And he was right. You really have to see it – and walk it – to appreciate it. To rediscover what nature does when left to its own devices. It’s an ecosystem that left Dúlra wide-eyed in wonder.
“I come here five days a week every week, and in the last 10 years I’ve only met three other people,” Tom tells Dúlra. “Every week it changes, with new butterflies and flowers. It never stays the same. I haven’t seen any ladybirds so far this year, but maybe next week I’ll come up and they’ll be everywhere. We can’t hear any crickets today, but some days they’ll be calling from everywhere.”
Sunday was one of those days when the sun was splitting the trees in a totally clear sky for ten minutes, then out of nowhere a dark cloud would appear overhead and you’d suddenly be soaked. Ten more minutes and it would be mid-summer once again and you'd dry out in no time.
We walked through the long grass – in truth it’s not grass but a tangle of wildflowers – and at each step meadow brown butterflies flitted ahead. At times they were so numerous they were like dark clouds themselves.
Tom has known for years this was a special place. The owner of this mountainside doesn’t farm, he just allows the odd horse to graze here and it’s enough to keep the hedgerows from taking over completely. Today environmentalists might call it rewilding, but it's been like this for centuries.
“That’s how all our fields used to be,” Tom said. “Remember? Even the old Horner’s Field on Shaws Road, or Smicker’s. These types of fields no longer exist.”
Sadly, he’s right. Corncrakes – that rarest of rare birds – nested during Dúlra’s lifetime in the above-mentioned fields adjacent to our own homes. They just needed a bit of untouched wilderness – not overgrazed or planted or mowed – to build their nests and raise their young. We denied them that and like so many ground-nesting birds, they were banished. But here, on this inaccessible swathe of Colin Mountain, the corncrake could again happily live undisturbed, if only there were any left to discover it.
Tom (63) certainly looks like a man who spent his life on the hills. His face is as weather-beaten as an old oak and he’ll never be seen without his countryman’s cap and walking stick. He may have been born in Andersonstown, but his father Séamus ensured his boy was well schooled in country ways, taking him ‘handwallopping’ trout in Tornaroy and teaching him how to identify edible wild mushrooms. Black Mountain loomed large over the housing states, and it had a gravitational pull on many people, Dúlra included.
Even as a teen, Tom preferred life in the fields to that of the city, camping out for weeks at a time under the shade of an old tree on Colin Mountain, living off the land.
“This is my favourite field of them all,” he said after we were wandering for half an hour. Tom untied an ancient rusting gate - doubtless handmade by a blacksmith - that led into a lower section.
It was the amazing scent that Dúlra noticed first. This field was full of flowering meadowsweet, airgead luachra in Irish, a plant of damp soil that attracts lots of moths and butterflies. In this field, the very air seemed heavy with life – indeed swifts and swallows buzzed overhead, attracted by the insects. In every field, orchids were as common here as tulips in a flower shop, they are hard to identify but an expert would surely find a rare one. And although today only meadow brown butterflies showed themselves, you can be sure that again this hillside will attract some rarities.
We walked on, Tom pointing out raspberry bushes and wild strawberries that he’ll pick later in the year for his wife to make jam and smoothies. Birds paid no attention to Tom. Bullfinches, chiffchaffs and blackcaps called from the ditches. “Have you ever seen ditches as good as these?” Tom asked – a question only a mountain man could come up with. A giant buzzard sat unbothered on a hawthorn – here hawthorns are able to grow into sturdy bushes – while last week Tom said a cuckoo almost flew into the windscreen of his van as he was arriving up the old overgrown loney.
As we were heading back to the car, Tom warned Dúlra to watch his step. Suddenly out of nowhere a deep ravine appeared. It was an old forgotten quarry. “With all the undergrowth, you don’t really know where the edge is,” Tom said. Dúlra peered down into the cold, dark, silent depths. Giant ferns covered the sides and floor like it was a yet-to-be-discovered part of the Amazon. Tom said he had last walked inside the old quarry three years ago, and no one has been there since.
“It was full of frogs and I’d say there are lizards in there as well. There are also jays and jackdaws and peregrines in there,” he said, referring to the falcon which is the world’s fastest creature. All this on a hill overlooking the city, forgotten by all except one man.
Let’s leave it like that, Dúlra thought. The wildlife of Colin Mountain could have no better guardian than Tom.
• If you’ve seen or photographed anything interesting, or have any nature questions, you can text Dúlra on 07801 414804.
