1.  Leave out water for the birds, in bird baths or even old upturned dustbin lids. Birds bathe to keep their feathers in good working condition.
2.  Try and be careful if you’re cutting bushes or hedges in case they contain a nest with eggs or fledglings in it.
3.  If you feed birds, don’t stop feeding them in the summer. Extensive studies have found there is very little chance of birds feeding unsuitable food to their chicks which might choke them which used to be the reason people would stop feeding them. The food you leave out will benefit the adult birds giving them more time to get suitable insect food for their chicks.

  Picking up a handful of leaves off the lawn I got a sharp pain in my finger so intense I realised it must be a sting. Sure enough there was the culprit on the ground, a bumble bee on it’s back legs waving in the air. Evidently under the impression he was under attack he’d defended himself in the only way he could. It was in that semi stupor state that you often find bumble bees in, often after the weather has turned cold. Bumble bees, unlike honey bees don’t die when they sting and this bee although not looking too happy at being disturbed was moving around sluggishly. I’d heard someone on the radio saying if you find a bumble bee in this sluggish condition it can be revived by giving it some honey so I went in to the house put a tiny drop of honey on a piece of card then came out and put the bee on the card. Sure enough the bee made its way to the honey (I was going to say it ‘made a beeline’ but I won’t!) and I could see its protracted mouth hoovering up the honey. Although it did seem a bit odd to be feeding Fair Trade Chilean honey to an Irish bee it seemed to do the trick and the bee visibly became more alert. I lifted card and bee to a safer place and hopefully it bumbled off for another day.

After strong northerly winds in April which would have held back summer migrants the winds moved around to blow from the south and combined with high pressure our summer birds started arriving in force. Swifts are usually the last species to arrive, being totally dependent on insects flying high in the warm air. Swifts are usually seen in the first few days of May and sure enough this year we saw our first Swifts on the 3rd of May. With a cold wind blowing from the south the birds were hawking insects in the calmer air over Dalkey Quarry. A few minutes earlier we’d been watching a pair of ravens squeezed into a small crevice on the quarry wall. Having found shelter out of the wind they were gently preening each others feathers. A very nice image of a bird often considered sinister but one of the most intelligent of birds always entertaining to watch. Living on the north west facing side of the hill I’d noticed before that when south or south easterly winds blow we sometimes get birds in or around the garden which have probably just arrived in off the sea or are feeding on the sheltered side of the hill. I had just gone to the door with a friend who is very keen on wildlife when we heard a bird calling a long, sustained almost metallic noise. I strongly suspected what it might be and my friend instantly confirmed my suspicions by saying ‘A Grasshopper Warbler’. Named after thesound a grasshopper makes, in fact what their call most resembles is the sound a angler makes winding in his fishing rod. On their breeding ground Grasshopper Warblers will sing from little thickets or bushes and are notoriously difficult to see although you seem so close to them you can almost feel the vibrations from their call. They share with Corncrakes the ability to make their song seem to move around, a sensible protection against predators while at the same time they’re proclaiming ‘this is my territory, unless you’re a female keep out.’ Anyhow having one of these birds in a garden is unusual but I knew he was just passing through. A few days later I saw a bird landing on the top of a neighbour’s ash tree. It didn’t look familiar, very slim with a very alert pose. Anyhow I was able to get the telescope trained on it and saw it was a female Wheatear. If anyone had asked me I’d have said you only ever see a wheatear on the ground, never perched on a tree. They’re usually a early migrant seen along the seashore before heading up to mountains where they’ll nest on or near the ground. But evidently this bird hadn’t read the reference books and didn’t know it shouldn’t be in a tree.