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County Louth (formerly Dundalk Bay) local patch. (5 Viewers)

Hi,
Living on the coast of Meath, I’m caught between the might of Dublin and the birding enthusiasm of the wee county. There is no Local Patch covering our short 10km of coastline so I will post to both Dublin & Louth.

Yesterday afternoon (Sat 20th Sept) I saw 9 Brent Geese at the Nanny estuary in Laytown. Am I right is surmising that it is very early for the geese to arrive here for the winter?

Paddy
 
Little Tern BBQ

The Little Tern BBQ will be held at Baltray on this sunday at 4pm (weather permitting). Bring your own food and drink.. a hot BBQ and company will be provided free of charge. Everybody with an interest in the project is welcome to attend.

Peter Phillips
 
The Little Tern BBQ will be held at Baltray on this sunday at 4pm (weather permitting). Bring your own food and drink.. a hot BBQ and company will be provided free of charge. Everybody with an interest in the project is welcome to attend.

Peter Phillips

You're barbequing little terns!!!!!?;)
Outrageous!

Owen
 
A nosiy rustling heard the other night by Andrew a knowledgeable nature lover whilst watering the grass in their garden in England turned out to be a hedgehog. My daughter took the pictures and it was my closest encounter with this rather nice animal.
 

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You're barbequing little terns!!!!!?;)
Outrageous!

Owen

Reminds me of nightly Mallorcan barbeques recently on holidays where birds are often eaten and considered totally essential to a childs diet along with snails, lobsters etc but thank goodness not little Terns............. Do we eat them? You can make a stand and refuse to eat the eyes and thats about the height of it without causing major offence..........and then you will be reminded of the diseases in the body that the eyes of certain creatures will eradicate and the qualities they will endower you with. One sea and a world of culture away. It goes without saying of course it is a legal small common variety of bird their children particularly are encouraged to eat as it is easy on their immature digestive systems. Also now considered a delicacy like snails and expensive but their childrens diet is of paramount importance to them, budgeting will be endured without question and no surprise to me that they can easily turn out some of the worlds toughest and strongest sports players. I believe it begins with their healthy diet.
 
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I wanted to pinpoint date sort of when I saw the last of Swallows, Swifts etc around here but possibly missed it whilst on hols not sure. I did not notice any around hospital between sept 4 untill 16 that I can recall but was tired from very high tempertures in Mallorca. I also did not notice any whilst in England six days. Recovering bit better from piggy flu today and cannot see sight nor sign of any of them from doorstep just. I am wondering is there a certain week they all head off to warmer countries or would any still be around.
 
I wanted to pinpoint date sort of when I saw the last of Swallows, Swifts etc around here but possibly missed it whilst on hols not sure. I did not notice any around hospital between sept 4 untill 16 that I can recall but was tired from very high tempertures in Mallorca. I also did not notice any whilst in England six days. Recovering bit better from piggy flu today and cannot see sight nor sign of any of them from doorstep just. I am wondering is there a certain week they all head off to warmer countries or would any still be around.

Still plenty of swallows (though I've seen many of them on their southward journeys) about, but swifts all well gone by now.
Sorry to hear you caught the swine flu - best wishes and a quick recovery.
 
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A nosiy rustling heard the other night by Andrew a knowledgeable nature lover whilst watering the grass in their garden in England turned out to be a hedgehog. My daughter took the pictures and it was my closest encounter with this rather nice animal.

Very nice - the one who lives in my garden is very timid - never seen his snout...
 
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Reminds me of nightly Mallorcan barbeques recently on holidays where birds are often eaten and considered totally essential to a childs diet along with snails, lobsters etc but thank goodness not little Terns............. Do we eat them?

All seabirds turn rancid once dead - the fish oils/sulphates from their diet makes them inedable (though i once heard a recipe for cormorant which involved burying the bird for a week and stuffing it with a brick before cooking at low heat for two days...

It is traditional in southern europe to catch and eat wild songbirds without too much heed for species.
 
All seabirds turn rancid once dead - the fish oils/sulphates from their diet makes them inedable (though i once heard a recipe for cormorant which involved burying the bird for a week and stuffing it with a brick before cooking at low heat for two days...

It is traditional in southern europe to catch and eat wild songbirds without too much heed for species.

So there is no fooling you Breffni |=)| |=)| well at least now I know that they never gave me a seabird. Indeed I recall on one occasion that my young daughter who often went into the woods early morning with great granny Nadal or Ripoll to collect fresh dead birds from the heat and wild asparagus simply refused to believe one little bird was dead. It escaped plucking for lunch that particular day and went into a shoe box instead. She carried it home to the appartment heartbroken protesting it to be still alive for days and it was a battle to finally get her to bury it. After that she never looked back really accepting their fate until the day she kicked up such a fuss not realising she was eating octupus always in the paella. I can still see her shoving the plate across the table indignantly folding her arms and the puzzled faces.
Many years later I watched my daughters eat and enjoy something which I will never agree to master and that is the whole head and body of small octupus which tastes rather like a boiled egg. It is apparantly so nutritious that it can sustain you all day and their equivalent to porridge I suppose. I have to say give me porridge anyday.......
 
It is of course totally illegal to interfere with any songbird in the EU but French President Mitterand was a fan: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5223077

That is just not nice and not a fan of him definitely. I recall too that the grandfather would always take us on a different route up to the allotment of fruit trees for fresh peaches, almond nuts on his daily walk to the train station to greet his friend the driver taking his morning break in Bunyola en route to Soller. He used to show me these dark big enough insects always trying to scrurry a little frantically under the unused sleepers from the railway lines as this seemed to be their natural habitat. He told me they were laced with nutrition and very tasty but they had to stop eating them after they went into decline. He liked to check that they were increasing again.
I knew the name in Catalan but have forgotten it now. I was horrified and asked him did anyone still eat them and he said the odd aged alcoholic passing through with no family left to beg a meal of would still. I recall thinking that they scurried away to avoid the imminent danger of being caught for a meal. I shudder to think of it still and used to sometimes politely question what we ate as there wasnt much light to see in the old stone houses so cool even on the hottest day. A futile ploy really as the Catalan answers left me none the wiser but the memory of those creatures stayed always. He was a man who never left his small town but knew the whole history of the world and more, could tell me about how Ireland a small island also had hard times in common with them. Indeed their youth now are probably more interested in Harry Potter and even the occasional junk English takeaway out of cool curiousity more than actually liking it but I notice they still love to listen about nutritious food. I imagine their elders are probably more horrified of losing their way of life than I was at the knowledge of edible insects whilst awaiting the arrival of the old wooden train that dusty hot morning in July.
 
In thailand I once ate stirfried locusts - they were delicious, pleasently crunchy with a peanut or maybe sesame taste, washed down with plenty of mekong whiskey and soda.

There were two curlew sandpipers at bellurgan today and i had a long eared owl in the fields again last night. On saturday night jupiter and its four visible moons showed brilliantly before it clouded over...
 
Myself and a couple of birders from Monaghan spent the day in the Dundalk Bay area yesterday.Birdwise it was more about quantity than quality with 70 species seen.
We began at the docks,not alot there so onto Soldiers Point where we saw 3 Guillemot on the water, one of them an injured bird. A couple of Chiffchaffs were chasing about in the local shrubbery and a Tree Sparrow was seen in a garden with large flocks of Linnets.
Afterwards we proceeded to Salterstown. Again fairly quiet but for good passage of Skylarks and Meadow Pipits and the odd Wheatear.
Seawatching at Dunnany Point was quiet except for the odd Guillemot and Razorbill and an obliging Little Egret on the pool. A Peregrine flew over harrassed by a Hooded Crow and a Swallow. This was one of 4 raptor species seen, the others being Sparrowhawk, Buzzard and Kestrel.We were unable to locate the 2 Hen Harriers at Cruisetown but we were supprised by the numbers of Kestrels there. These are getting scarce in Monaghan.
Stock Doves were at Cruisetown too.
Lurgangreen my favourite part of the bay produced little but the usual suspects.
Overall not a bad day. Nice to go somewhere different. We will be back in October.
 
In thailand I once ate stirfried locusts - they were delicious, pleasently crunchy with a peanut or maybe sesame taste, washed down with plenty of mekong whiskey and soda.

There were two curlew sandpipers at bellurgan today and i had a long eared owl in the fields again last night. On saturday night jupiter and its four visible moons showed brilliantly before it clouded over...

I easily believe you because I can still see their grandfather gesturing with his hands and mouth etc to ensure that I fully understood how delicious they were. He was making certain that the Catalan which is more difficult to learn than Castellano Spanish did not cause confusion.
Better still I watched my sister in law do a ritual and I mean ritual on Charlys head (as we call him sometimes) to get rid of a bad fever. He came home hysterical (you could have heard him in Ireland) with a sore head and throat from the festival and I smiled to watch the white witch ritual first then the tepid bath then a childs dose of medicine given to an 11 year old boy. I thought we are in for a night of it if they dont up that dose but indeed one hour later he was asking for two steak hot sandwiches. It took the fever out of him .......a few other spells wouldnt go amiss too ............. as my daughter often says blaming eeeee's in food for hyper kids is over rated big time. They most certainly do not get the rubbish there. They still use every plant every flower under their sun dried out to try to cure most ailments first. The healing herbal medicine woman still exists on every mountain, in every village and that will never change.
 
In 2004/5 there was a flock of 1000+ common scoter viewable from annaloughin/giles quay. There were a few long-tailed ducks and a purported baltic eider amongst them. If anyone has photos of the flock or any subsequent records of large flocks in north dundalk bay i'd be very interested.
 
I am so pleased as I finally have lots of berries on my Yew tree this year for the Mistle Thrushes who check it out yearly. Also Breffni I think you posted this wild flower and named it the Cuckoo flower or something like that. Is it a wild flower or a type of crocus, there are lots of them this time of year in the grassy verges near here.
 

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