A visit to Cloudforest Five
Last week we travelled down to Cloudforest Five in Mountoven, County Kerry. This fabulous site was planted in March 2023 with 16,000 native Irish trees, and is home to our timelapse camera, and two newly established native Irish honey bee hives carefully tended to by the wonderful NIHBS beekeeper John Greenaway.
The site has a lot of gorse and heather growing throughout it, providing the bees with plenty of nectar and pollen. We were delighted to see the Gorse still flowering heavily in areas of the site - hopefully this gives the girls a late-year boost to their winter store.
While our trees are still quite young, we were delighted to see the Scots Pine just peeking above the tall grass that covers much of the site. They’ve spent the last 18 months getting their roots in the ground, and we’re expecting to see them take off over the next year - looking forward to seeing them start to appear on the timelapse any day!!
The Alder and Downy Birch are doing well, standing tall throughout the site. The Alder is mostly planted further down the slope where it’s a bit wetter, and the Downy Birch higher up in the grassland areas.
We also have plenty of Oak planted throughout the site, and noticed a very mixed bag in terms of size. Some of this is due to the escapades of a flock of sheep that was snuck into the site last year, helping themselves to lunch at the expense of some of our young saplings. Luckily, the sheep were evicted fairly quickly and the nibbled saplings appear to have regrown for the most part, albeit some with a more shrubby habit on account of losing their leading stems!
Cloudforest Five had an amazing population of Holly growing on it already, so the forest was planted carefully around them with an eye to not disrupt them too much. Just as happy growing under a deciduous forest canopy as out in the open, the slow-growing Holly trees will provide a readymade shrub layer when the Scots Pine and Oak eventually overtake them.
We were stunned with the vibrancy of the display they were putting on during our visit, with the female trees absolutely laden with bright red berries! So bright, we’ll have to invest in a better camera than can truly capture the gorgeous colours on display.
The visit was full of birdsong, although they seemed to be very camera shy. We were greeted by two huge Ravens circling overhead, and throughout our time there we ID’d the calls of Goldcrest, Magpie, Wren, Meadow Pipit, Robin, Chaffinch, Great Tit, Goldfinch, Dunnocks, Bullfinch, Rooks, Reed Bunting, and Stonechat!
And of course, a trip to Cloudforest Five wouldn’t be complete without giving a shout-out to the CoolPartners who invested in this forest. Massive thanks to Secure Logiq for planting 3,000 trees, Health Services Staff Credit Union, My Irish Cousin and Midsummer Ireland who each planted 1000 trees, and IMS Connect who planted 250 trees.
