Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Year Two - January to June 2008

We kicked off 2008 with a talk by Dick Coombes from Birdwatch Ireland. Dick gave a fascinating account of a few trips to Iceland covering cetaceans, birds and hot springs.











Humpback whale diving

Then in February Peter Phillips gave a review of rare and scarce birds recorded in County Louth during 2007., the best of which were probably Forster's Tern and Long-billed Dowitcher at Cruisetown strand and Dundalk Docks respectively. It was also noted that evening that a well known Louth birder had seen 165 species in Louth in 2007, an impressive number for a small north-eastern county.












Long-billed Dowitcher and Forster's Tern, American visitors


The same evening Brian Caffery from BWI gave a talk on the current Bird Atlas work. In a diversion from birds, the Spring season of talks finished with two talks by Don Hodgers in March and April on Odonata first, then butterflies and moths.

Black Guillemots

The Black Guillemot conservation project was completed in April with the drilling of eight nesting holes on the north wall of Oriel Port at Clogherhead thanks to a donation of 1300 Euros from Oriel Wind.












The work involved drilling into reinforced concrete while suspended on a crane - there's a lot of DIY in bird conservation!















Fortunately it was nice weather!

In May we had our annual Dawn Chorus outing, this time to Mellifont Abbey where we were greeted by a magnificant dawn at 5am. After a walk around the grounds we were received by the Monks and stayed in the refectory chatting, albiet slightly dazed after getting lost in the garden maze, and drinking tea until 7am.

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