Birdwatch Ireland’s Cape Clear Bird Observatory celebrates its 60th birthday this year, and to mark the occasion the island is hosting a nearly two-week-long wildlife festival from Monday 02 September to Saturday 14 September. Well known British “celebrity birder” David Lindo, The Urban Birder, swaps his familiar cityscapes for the….

Minister for Culture Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan TD has announced that she will not exercise her discretionary powers under the new Heritage Act to allow hedge-cutting to proceed in August this year.“Hedgerows are a very important wildlife habitat, providing food, shelter, corridors of movement, nest and hibernation sites….

This Monday, 30 November 2015, sees the start of Birdwatch Ireland’s most popular survey: the annual winter Garden Bird Survey. Every year Ireland’s largest conservation NGO asks households across the country to record the birds visiting their gardens between the start of December and the end of February. How the Garden Bird….

A young hen harrier has been found shot dead near Waterville in Co. Kerry. The satellite tagged bird-of-prey, a young female dubbed “Heather” by local schoolchildren, was part of a joint project by regional development organisation IRD Duhallow and the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS). Heather became an online star via the….

A review by The Dapartment of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht of legislation under the Wildlife Act that governs the period when hedgerows can be cut has put landowners and environmental groups on a collision course. As it currently stands the legislation prohibits hedge cutting (with certain exceptions) between the 01 March….

Conservation efforts to save the corncrake from extinction in Ireland appear to be paying dividends. Authorities reported a significant increase in the number of calling male birds during their 2014 corncrake population census, up to 230 from 185 birds recorded last year. The largest concentration of corncrakes was in Donegal,….

The West Cork and Cork Branches of BirdWatch Ireland are hosting an illustrated talk by Cork based author and naturalist Jim Wilson on Friday 7th February 2014. The event takes place at the Cork International Airport Hotel, with doors opening at 7pm, and the talk commencing at 8pm sharp. This is the….

This post is part of the Crossley ID Guide Britain & Ireland Blog Tour — yesterday the tour was over at Mark Avery’s blog here — tomorrow it moves on to BirdWords… the official site of Dominic Couzens… who’s one of the book’s authors. You’ll find the full tour schedule here. NB. I’ll be….

Andrew Power and Peter Cutler produced this fabulous documentary offering insight into the Little Tern breeding colony at Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow, and the ongoing efforts to protect them. Little terns are Ireland’s smallest tern species, and one of our rarest breeding seabirds. The colony in Kilkoole is Ireland’s largest. For….

Over the last five years woodland on Ireland’s east coast has started to reverberate with the drumming of a very welcome blow-in. This feature documenting that recolonisation was first published in the October 2013 edition of Bird Watching magazine in the UK. Ireland is home to some truly fantastic wildlife….

For many people, a desire to identify the birds they see visiting their garden, or when they’re out and about, is the first step to an enduring fascination with nature and wildlife. It was birds that infected me with the nature bug way back when, and I still remember my….

Ireland’s largest conservation charity, Birdwatch Ireland, has responded strongly to recent comments by Limerick Co. Councillor John Sheahan calling for an “Open Season” on the protected hen harrier — one of most threatened birds. “Cllr. Sheahan’s ill-informed and short-sighted statement shows how far we have to travel as a state….