As you may know, the BirdWatch Ireland South Dublin Branch’s major conservation project off Dalkey Island, the Dalkey
Tern Project, had a disastrous year in 2007. A combination of a full moon bringing high tides as a ferocious storm blew
from the North East meant the sea washed over Maidens Rock in early June destroying any nests and washing off most of the decoys, nest boxes and gravel we’d taken out a few weeks before. Luckily the birds had been very late beginning nesting so it was probably only eggs, not growing chicks, that were lost but it was what happened afterwards that set us back. Storms had decimated the tern colony in previous years, very sad when it happened but the resilient birds had came back, nested again and some chicks were fledged. But what happened after the washoff last June? Nothing. The birds completely deserted Maidens Rock and made no attempt to nest again. Hopefully they went somewhere else to try nesting again, - Rockabill possibly - but for us it was a very disappointing season. For the first time since the project began in 1995 no terns bred in Dalkey. So this year as the weeks of May passed and there wasn’t any sign of birds arriving we were getting fairly pessimistic. We had taken out nestboxes and spread gravel around. Then those summer storms came again and the rock got battered by high seas. A lot of the boxes got knocked out of place and we didn’t have a opportunity to go out to readjust them. Was this the end of the project, washed away by the storms that were becoming increasingly more common in what should have been midsummer? The only terns around were Sandwich Terns which would soon be heading west to nest. Herring gulls were roosting on Maidens Rock in the evening which was a bad sign; the terns wouldn’t nest while they were
on the rock. The last few evenings in May came and went and I was fairly certain at this stage we weren’t going to have any terns nesting. We dropped down on Sunday 1st June and as we got out of the car I thought I could hear terns calling. I had, they were back! Over 30 terns were sitting on Maiden’s Rock, many mating, some looking like they were already nesting
and, in the middle of them, a glorious Roseate Tern standing outside one of the surviving nestboxes. Not just standing beside it, it was going into it and sitting, evidently planning on laying eggs there. One solitary pair of Arctic terns were trying to nest on Lamb Islandvaliantly dive bombing the goats which had fled to that outcrop to escape the day-trippers. On Bank Holiday Monday the pair of Roseates was in the box and the rest of the rock was buzzing with activity, Common Terns and a few Arctic Terns were courting, males presenting sand eels to the females. Others were mating and some sitting, presumably on
eggs. We went over to straighten up the boxes and sure enough in the nest box was a pair of Roseate Tern eggs. At time of writing the bird was still sitting in the box so we can only hope the weather will be kind to them this year. Sadly, any prolonged spell of dry sunny weather always brings the threat of a gorse fire breaking out on the hills or in Dalkey Quarry. It was at the back of my mind during the lovely spell of weather over the June Bank Holiday. There’s a tiny possibility that gorse fires start accidentally but the vast majority are mindless acts of vandalism with sometimes multiple fires being started on the same day. Sometimes a plume of smoke on Howth Head will prompt a copycat outbreak on Dalkey hill or the slopes above White Rock. Apart from the waste of water and the time involved by the Fire Brigade trying to control them, these
fires can be devastating to wildlife, especially in spring and early summer. Apart from incinerating young birds in their nests thousands of insects and butterfly and moth pupae are destroyed. The gorse itself is almost indestructible and will recover but often trees are permanently damaged. During the winter a fire was started in the Eucalyptus grove between Torca and Knocknacree Road which kept burning over the next five days dying down then flaring up as years of dried gorse spines which had heaped at the base of the bushes caught alight. The fire brigade came up almost every day but couldn’t dampen the fire enough and eventually it burnt to the edge of the path destroying a number of conifers. The Bank Holiday weekend passed ok but a few weeks later I heard the Fire Brigade one night and the following day found a large area of gorse on the slopes above the Vico Road had been devastated by fire and was still smouldering and burning in places. Thankfully
Jim Ellis of DLR Parks Department got some of the parks staff to go up and fight the fire which was breaking out again whipped up by the wind and its spread was contained but what a depressing sight it will present for months to come. The following morning on some unburnt gorse just below the path a pair of Linnets was perched. The male linnet has a lovely song which is performed to proclaim his nesting territory but this time it was the female calling. It would be pure supposition to think they might have lost a nest in the fire but undoubtedly there were many other perplexed birds wondering where their young had gone. Penguins? I don’t think so.
  Birdwatch Ireland often get reports of sightings of penguins, birds which are only found in the Southern Hemisphere with
the nearest colony being in South Africa. Invariably these sightings turn out to be a member of the Auk family, usually
Guillemots which with their white underside, dark head and back, long pointed beak and upright stance when perched do
resemble penguins. Unlike penguins they can fly, with a very rapid wingbeat as they fly low over the surface of the sea, but
it’s underwater that they’re really impressive. They are among the best divers in the world, plunging deep into the sea to catchfish and crustaceans. Some 90 metres (300 feet) below Britain’s North Sea, operators of a remote video camera were astonished to see a guillemot casually swimming around at a depth and pressure which would force humans to wear a reinforced suit. The previously known record for this bird was around two-thirds of this depth Auks are a family of seabirds which include Guillemots, Razorbills, Puffins and the Black Guillemot, a bird which can be regularly seen at Colimore Harbour. A very smart bird in its breeding plumage, black apart from a big white patch on the wing with very visible red
legs. Early morning or when there aren’t too many people around you can see these birds perched on the pier at Colimore or on the rocks below the harbour wall at low tide and they can often be seen swimming or flying across Dalkey Sound. While across the water on Dalkey Island in early spring we saw a bird I’d have thought very unlikely to be there - a male Pheasant!
  
The BirdWatch South Dublin Branch had a coach trip to Offaly in June visiting Clonmacnoise, Shannonbridge and Lough Boora Parklands. The latter was formerly Boora Bog and when all the workable peat had been extracted a group of ex Bord na Mona employees and some other local people got together to see how the area could be utilised both for the benefit of wildlife and as a leisure area. With lots of water and undisturbed areas it has attracted lots of birds in the winter and many breeding birds in the summer. A lovely place to visit with walks and a sculpture park which includes a wonderful replica of
one of the narrow gauge trains that used carry the peat. We went to a bird viewing hide and one of the BirdWatch Ireland field workers came to tell us about the conservation work being done there. He explained the number of bird normally to be seen was down and the likely reason was flying over us. There was a Model Airplane ‘airdrome’ very close to the hide and these very impressive models were being sent airborne sounding like flying dentists drills. The birds were used to these planes but apparently a recent addition could have been causing the problem. One of - if not the first - jet powered model aircraft in Ireland was being flown from the grass airstrip. Shaped like a Delta wing bomber and sounding like the real thing it was very spectacular in the air but evidently causing concern to some of the wildfowl who were keeping their heads down.

TERNS IN DALKEY
In July a neighbour was expecting some American friends who had been on a cycling tour of Ireland. Unfortunately their holiday coincided with torrential rain, floods and cool winds all under a grey sunless sky. Before they even got to Dublin they had given up, worn down by the damp and gloom and booked a flight to the South of France. Holidaying in Ireland in the summer can be a gamble but Ireland in the winter attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors who are quite happy to stay here for six months or more. Not a terribly wise move you might think but then these visitors are coming here to escape days of almost continuous darkness, ice and snow in the far north and cold weather and lack of food availability in the east. These visitors are birds; waders, ducks, swans, geese, thrushes and finches. If you’d like to find out a little more about the birds that flock to Ireland in the Winter there’s a free illustrated talk about them in the Kingston Hotel on the 2nd September.
Organised by the South Dublin Branch of BirdWatch Ireland the talk is free and open to everyone. It is aimed at people who are interested in wildlife and would like to know a lot more about it. We’ll be talking about and giving identification tips on the many different species of birds including waders, geese, ducks and all the birds that might turn up on fields and parks near you and even in your garden. We’ll be explaining why some of these birds travel thousands of miles to get to our shores and lakes and what keeps them here over the winter months. We’ll also have a question and answer session afterwards so if there’s anything you want to know about birds we hope we’ll be able to answer your queries. We’ll have a little shop at the meeting as well at which we’ll be selling bird food, bird identification guides and CDs. We have meetings at the Kingston every month from September to May with a talk about birds or some wildlife-related subject and each meeting is followed by a guided outing or coach trip to see birds. Our September outing is to Kilcoole (the village formerly known as ‘Glenroe’) in Co. Wicklow. We’ll be walking down the coast with the sea on one side and the BirdWatch Ireland reserve and open fields and farmland inland. In September a lot of birds will have came down from their breeding grounds in the far north and will be stopping over at sites such as this. There will also be swallows and house martins that might be feeding up before setting off across the sea to begin their journey to Africa. The photograph shows a Roseate Tern chick which was
born in June in a nestbox on Maidens Rock off Dalkey Island. It is being weighed and having a ring, or band, put on its leg to act as a record in case the bird is recovered somewhere else, such as near its wintering ground off West Africa. Through leg rings on birds it can be established where and when they were born and where they have flown from. Through leg rings it has
been found that Roseates can live up to 17 years. They are one of Europe’s most endangered breeding seabirds, so Dalkey is privileged to have at least one pair breeding. The rings are put on very carefully and don’t cause any distress to the birds. Bird ringers have to have a licence which they get after doing hundreds of supervised ringings. Although only one pair of Roseates bred on Maidens Rock there were also Common and Roseate terns breeding on it, though once again subject to the treacherous weather of an Irish summer.