Migrating birds and the September 11th “Tribute in Light” Memorial
In the summer of 1999 I visited the World Trade Center, going up the elevator to Windows on The World. I often wondered if the jovial elevator operator was on…
Tag: birds
Extinct in Ireland, September 9th, Black-necked Grebe
From Whittled Away: Bred at Lough Funshinagh, County Roscommon, until 1957. This 2015 Irish Examiner piece gives more of the story: The species once had a special relationship with Ireland; a County…
Extinct in Ireland, September 7th, the Corn Bunting
My September blog series Extinct in Ireland continues dolefully on. And here is a bird extinct as a breeding species in Ireland very much within recent memory: the Corn Bunting.…
Extinct in Ireland, September 4th, the Bittern
My rather melancholy September project continues. Another bird today, this time the bittern. From “Whittled Away”: Eaten in Medieval times, it nested in undisturbed wetlands until the mid 1800s. Winter…
Corncrake in UCD 1982
The autum 2018 issue of Wings, the magazine of BirdWatch Ireland, has a piece on the avifauna of University College Dublin‘s Belfield campus. For those unfamiliar this is in the…
Bird feeding and tracking notes, March 2018
Been a while since I <a href="https://seamhow much a local cat frequents our gardenussweeney.wordpress.com/2017/07/16/bird-feeding-notes-mid-july/”>I published bird-feeding notes. I was perhaps chastened by my unintended killing of greenfinches and felt there…
“it is very difficult not to anthropomorphise puffins” – Peter Reason on Puffins
I have been posting some thoughts inspired by Peter Reason’s book In Search of Grace. I am trying not to let this blog turn into nothing but a series of…
Bird feeding notes, mid July
I have sheepishly avoided posting anything on bird feeding since this fatal illustration of the principle of unintended consequences. Disposing of the prior feeders (although this may have been overkill) and…
Séamus Sweeney 