ardnasx1 said:I noticed on the NI thread that quite a few swifts have been seen up there. Anyone seen any here yet? I haven't.
One little tern on the beach at Baltray today and quite a few sandwich terns. The tide was in and it was quite high. There were a nice lot of waders around in summer plumage including sanderlings, turnstones, dunlins, and nesting ringed plovers.
It appeared this morning that one pair of little egrets might have been attempting to nest. This would be several weeks earlier than last year. The neighbouring heron didn't seem happy with it's new neighbour and there was a lot of squabbling going on, so I wouldn't be surprised if they don't stick it out. Some of the young herons look to be fledged or almost fledged and there are plenty of large nestlings still in nests.
breffni said:I got a call saying that starlings had disappeared from centre of Dundalk (around Market Street) - anybody else notice a lack of starlings (and possibly feral pigeons)?
Council knows nothng about it...
Hard to say. Councils occasionally control urban feral pigeons using doped seed, they typically use a product called Alpha Chloralose - "sleepy crow", but have not done anything recently in Dundalk. Freelance poisoning is also a possibility. Flocking birds are also occasionally susceptable to various communicable diseases such as trichomonas or salmonella. I suppose its also possible that they have recently changed feeding habits away from seeds/rubbish and more towards insects/invertrebates to feed nestlings...gareth2005 said:That interesting, what do you think could be possible causes ? I have noticed a lack of Starlings in the garden compared to last year, but thought nothing of it.
Was there much open bank space at available at Cortial? might give it a try for fishing some weekend, I heard it used to be great spot
Numbers of black guillemots at Clogherhead seem to be down a bit in the last few days. On Monday there was one in one of the new nest holes at the end of the pier.