Tá Préacháin Sa Chaisleán - Irish Birding

Rook crow nest silhouettes

My schedule was full the past week I spent in Ireland, and there wasn't a wild area near my hotel to walk through looking for birds. Even though I could watch fields across the road from the fourth floor restaurant, there wasn't good access, and I would have felt uncomfortable trespassing. My hosts were most amiable, going out of their way when there was a chance to show me a little bit more of Ireland than the inside of meeting and hotel rooms. The most noticeable bird I saw for all the driving around the parts of the country I visited were crows - both Rooks, Jackdaw, and some Hooded Crows and Magpies. Most impressive were the nests in the trees around Duckett's Grove Castle in County Carlow. They continued a barrage of calls, flying overhead, and some landing in holes in the walls of the castle. (The on-line European Birdguide Online is an excellent reference - it seems as helpful as the Cornell Ornithology Laboratory site.)

Brownshill Portal Tomb

There were not a lot of other birds to be seen - maybe it was just a little too soon in the season. But the other most noted for me as the Robin I saw while walking back from viewing the great rock structure that makes up Brownshill Portal Tomb. There were a good number of birds chirping in the trees along the path leading to the structure - a near hedge of shrubs intertwined with the trees over our heads. I got a quick glimpse of a colored bird, and then again when we were just about back to the car park. I had heard earlier in passing that the robins in Ireland are smaller than the ones in North America, so when I quickly flipped through the pages of my Birds of Europe, and found on page 276 the same as described to me earlier in the week, I had my first confirmed new identification in Europe.

I didn't get a photograph of the little Robin, and the photograph of the Rooks in the rock walls of the castle didn't turn out well, so a few other sight seeing photographs around Duckett's Grove Castle are presented instead.

Castle and jet fuel precursor

Behind the castle

An abandoned bridge, as the house

Bluebells outside the walls

Return path from a dead end

Enter the garden

The formal abandoned estate's garden

A superfluity of nuns on an outing