MAKING YOUR VISITORS WELCOME
When we talk about wildlife habitats we usually think of bogs, heathland or marshes but one of the most widespread and increasingly important habitats is suburban gardens. If you’d like to try and make your garden more attractive to birds and other wildlife there’s a illustrated free talk on how to do that at the Kingston Hotel, Dun Laoghaire at 8.00pm Tuesday 8th September. In the first talk of the winter season the South Dublin Branch of Birdwatch Ireland will be showing how you can help wildlife and especially birds through planting, feeding and providing nesting and roosting sites. We’ll also be showing what birds you are likely to get visiting the garden. Many birds survive the winter, and some of our colder summers, purely by the food that is provided to them in gardens through feeders and food plants and it’s good to know you’re helping these birds survive as well as the obvious pleasure you can get from watching them up close. There will be a shop at the meeting selling bird food, feeders and books. Everybody welcome and free entry.

TAKING TO THE WATER IN WICKLOW

We’d been for a drive over the Dublin Mountains and found ourselves in Laragh so I thought if there’s room in the free car park we’ll try Glendalough. Although Glendalough seems to have a mini climate of its own, a very humid and usually very wet one, we’d already driven through a torrential shower and reckoned we’d had our quota of rain for a while. Even with all the sightseers and coachloads of tourists that visit Glendalough it’s still a very peaceful serene place and it doesn’t take much effort to get off the busier paths and find yourself alone among the trees with only a few thousand midges for company. Anyhow we had no problem getting parking and we set off wandering around the lakes. Glendalough has some uncommon species of birds breeding there but late afternoon in August wasn’t a good time to see them and we’d be happy to have a nice walk without getting drenched. Some birds that are relatively common in the oak woods of Wales just a few miles across the Irish Sea are almost exclusively only found in Ireland around Glendalough including Redstarts and Wood Warblers which arrive in spring to breed among the oaks, the damp warm woodlands providing lots of insect food. It’s also one of the best places in Wicklow to see Jays, another oak wood specialist.

A relatively recent addition to Glendalough are Goosanders, a saw billed fish eating duck, similar to, but much rarer than the Merganser which are regularly seen off the coast. These birds are often seen on the lakes in the early morning before it gets busy but as soon as the visitors arrive they fly down to the Avonmore River. They were first seen on the river in the 90’s and are now breeding successfully in Wicklow due to the provision of nest boxes placed on tree trunks which replicate the holes in trees they normally nest in. When the chicks are ready to leave the nest they will jump out of these holes to the ground, a big jump for a small bird, and then they’ll follow their mother to the water. We visited the National Parks Interpretive Centre which has a great collection of presumably very old) stuffed animals and interesting displays of creatures and their nests that are common around the area. I was glad to hear that very few Grey Squirrels are found around Glendalough and the Reds are still very prevalent.

Coincidentally the person working in the interpretive centre was actually from Killiney and she remembered when she was young having red squirrels in the garden of her family home, sadly all gone, replaced by greys. We walked on towards the larger lake. I’d been keeping an eye on the little streams but of course it was my much sharper eyed companion who spotted what I’d been looking for. Perched on a stone in the little stream about 20 feet away was a Dipper. These are lovely plump, almost round, little birds. Dark wings and back while their chest and lower front is a lovely chocolate brown colour with a contrasting snow white bib around their neck. They’re always found in or beside fast flowing streams or rivers where they bob up and down on rocks before plunging into the water. They feed by swimming or walking along the stream bed picking up insects such as beetles, bugs, mayflies, stoneflies and their larvae and even catching

little shrimps. Apart from the white chest, the constant bobbing motion and frequently flicking tail there’s something else very striking about the dipper. When it blinks it’s like a little camera shutter opening, as a metallic flash descends over it’s eyes. This is a thin film called a nictitating membrane, which acts as a thin, transparent eyelid to protect the eye when it’s underwater, enabling the bird to see its prey. I’d never seen one so close and our presence didn’t seem to bother it at all, presumably it was used to all the activity around the lakes and we watched it stepping in and out of the water plucking out what looked like larval cases. By the lakeside we saw Grey Wagtails and a couple of Ravens croaked their way overhead. The many inaccessible cliffs around the lake make it an ideal habitat for ravens and peregrines. Lots of Chaffinches, Chiffchaffs and Treecreepers and a unexpected small flock of Crossbills enlivened our return walk and it wasn’t even a good time of the year to see or hear birds. And the rain kept off. Must go back in the Spring.