The weekend before last, I was at the Irish Raptor Study Groups’ conference in Dublin.
What a great bunch of people – passionate and so friendly. It might seem just a little stereotypical to say that one always gets a friendly welcome in Ireland, in all parts of Ireland, but in my experience it is most certainly true.
And travel is said to broaden the mind. I heard about where eagles used to roam in Mayo and where Ospreys do roam as they migrate to Africa or southern Europe, and also quite a lot about the rather different problems of the Hen Harrier in Ireland compared with England and Scotland: a much bigger emphasis on threats from forestry and agricultural intensification. As I said in my talk we are still dealing with nineteenth century threats to Hen Harriers and other raptors in much of the UK (game interests killing raptors illegally and deliberately) whereas the Hen Harrier faces twenty-first century problems in Ireland.
Here are a few links to information about the Hen Harrier in Ireland, here, here, here, here, here, here.
As with many conferences, it was the free flow of goodwill and information outside of the talks which was inspiring and the Guinness helped that flow readily.
And on a personal note, I added a new racecourse to my list, Leopardstown on the Sunday, and a new bird to my birds of racecourses list: Hooded Crow. Thank you to everyone for making this such a successful and enjoyable event.
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I think it was 1985, visiting a gamekeeper colleague In Sligo, we had to go to Donegal for some reason. There we briefly participated in the search for the first Buzzard nest in the area since eradication at the start of the century. They had recently returned to the Republic.
The prize, from the area forest conservancy officer, was to be a bottle of whiskey, we had to leave before anybody claimed it.
That’s Ireland.
I don’t really like whisky only in my tea on cold mornings.