Starting Sunday 13th May on RTÉ One at 6:30pm, ‘A Wild Irish Year’ is a captivating new four-part series bringing us all across the country from our wild coasts, mountains and woodlands to farms, towns and cities.
Across each episode the presenting team, Tara Shine, Rob Gandola and Eoin Warner, guide us through a single season showcasing some of our most spectacular natural events and meeting along the way a diverse range of people whose lives are still deeply connected to the changing seasons.
Filmed over the course of a year, cutting edge camera technologies allowed the team to capture Ireland’s changing seasons in new and exciting ways. High-speed cameras slow down the frantic movements of Sandmartins and Swallows, tiny migrants that come all the way from Africa, incredible low-light technology reveals the Autumnal activity of a Badger sett, aerial footage offers a bird’s-eye-view of the shifting countryside below and timelapse photography accelerates the gradual changes in the weather and landscape to allow viewers the opportunity to watch as our island transforms through the year.
Episode Two: Summer
Summertime and the living is easy, so the famous lyrics claim, but not quite so for the natural world. As human family routines relax and the focus moves to holidays, the natural world cannot afford such luxuries and it pushes into overdrive. From nesting birds to hatching insects, feeding whales to playful cubs – the summer season is all about the next generation. In episode 2, Eoin shares his love of Bees as he reveals the complex process of honey making in his beehives. Tara brings us the story of the Curlew and its catastrophic decline in the Irish countryside, while Rob brings us his personal favourite Irish animals, lizards – both those with and without legs! We meet a sheep shearing family who travel the farms of Ireland getting their sheep ready for the summer ahead and a whale watcher who wandered onto the Dingle Peninsula 25 years ago and hasn’t left since.
A Wild Irish Year continues Sunday, 20th May at 6.30pm on RTÉ One.