CAIRDE EANLAITH NA GAILLIMHE BIRDWATCH GALWAY This is a local forum newsletter www.birdwatchgalway.org – contributions and comments SPECIAL 75 TH EDITION are most welcome. Distributed by e mail only Telephone: 086 1680856 e-mail: [email protected] Issue No. 75 Nov 2011 THE 75 TH SPECIAL EDITION BRANCH NEWSLETTER MATTERS funding to continue schoolwork well into 1993. Over the years schools could request occasional visits by In deciding to do something special for this landmark The 75 th issue of the Galway Newsletter does not one of our members free of charge. Now, we rarely edition my objective was to produce something that only invite us to look forward to the next 75 issues, get asked to give talks in schools as most NPWS would firstly offer a reflection of Galway birdwatching but also invites us to look back over the earlier issues Rangers visit schools, the County Council has funded down the years and secondly include articles that – with some trepidation as one never knows what a number of school projects and there is funding from showed the state of present day birdwatching here. lurks in the chronicles of our branch - our ups and the Department of Education to facilitate accredited Finally, as we keep stressing of late, the continuity of downs, our arrivals and departures, our people, heritage courses in schools. Environmental education the branch really depends on fresh input from new places and programmes, and what, over time, has has been put on a more professional footing at last! and younger people and the hope is that this special been important to us, the community of bird watchers As you can see, the Newsletter has chronicled publication will help to bring this about. in County Galway. many changes and makes for interesting reading, Thanks to an amazing response from so many Let’s start at the start and reveal a little secret:- providing jolting flashbacks, throwing up reminders contributors I feel that the first two objectives have this is actually the 80 th Galway Newsletter . The not only of people, places and regular activities, but been largely achieved. The third is in the hands of the present run of newsletters, edited by Neil Sharkey, also of columns that flourished and faded, were tried future! So, my thanks to all who responded and a started with Issue No.1 in Spring 1993 but there but didn’t take, or lasted from 1986 till this very issue. particular thanks to Marianne for her unfailing help in were 5 earlier newsletters, Issues No. 1 to No. 5, The earlier issues are now of an age that you may putting it all together. NS dated January 1986 to November 1987, and guess consider getting one of a significant year framed to who was one of the editors, with Dave Nuttall: none remind a young bird watching recipient NS of what went CONTENTS other than Neil Sharkey! And no prizes for guessing before! who was branch secretary in 1986….. Marianne ten Cate The 75 th Special Edition Neil Sharkey That first 1986 Newsletter contains a sketch of the beginnings of the branch, starting with the inaugural Branch Newsletter Matters Marianne ten Cate meeting in the Odeon Café on Eyre Square on the 3 rd From Lawrencetown in the ‘Far East’ Stephen Heery of May 1969, arranged by Fr Brendan Dillon OP, who later became our Life President and remained deeply The Newsletter – how it happened Neil Sharkey interested in the branch, even when he had moved to A Galway period Dave Nutall Rome and later Tralee, till he died there in the Autumn of 2005. The first formal committee was Birding co-incidences – elected in 1971 and included Martin Byrnes, who is 1 st Irish Records in County Galway Joe Hobbs still an active member! Recollections Pádraic Reaney Our Galway membership has steadily grown from Birdwatchers at the outing at Nimmo’s Pier during no more than 30 members in 1971 to over 150 in Tony Whilde – a day of tribute Gerry Donnelly Heritage Week 2011 with Galway Bird Guide and 1986 and well over 300 at present. heritage teacher Tom Cuffe. (Photograph Tom Cuffe) A birdwatcher’s progression Gerry O Keeffe In 1996 the Irish Wildbird Conservancy (IWC) was renamed BirdWatch Ireland. With this name change My patch Brendan Dunne FROM LAWRENCETOWN IN THE ‘FAR EAST’ the Galway branch adopted the shorthand ‘BirdWatch Tribute Peadar O Dowd Galway’, but we were asked to call ourselves the A very short ramble through thirty-one years in the far Galway Branch of BirdWatch Ireland to be clearly Raptors…. Raptors – east of County Galway leads me to the following. identified as a branch of the national organisation. five years with the hen harrier Aonghus O Dónaill In the early eighties, during the three-year Initially, our ‘years’ ran from October to October national census, the sound and sight of geese along Down in the dumps Marianne ten Cate but, after a gradual slide till later in the year, from the linear landscape of the River Suck remain in my 2001 our annual report covers a calendar year and Down Memory Lane Martin Byrnes mind. A local newspaper misquoted me, saying that Annual General Meetings take place in early January. Lough Lurgeen bog was a habitat for the green and I-WeBS Galway Helen Boland Changes also took place in the venues for our white fronted grouse. Greenland White-fronted Geese meetings, which, since 1984, are all in the Anno An English birder abroad Pete Capsey Anser albifrons flavirostris still use this raised bog Santo Hotel on Threadneedle Road and kindly near Glenamaddy. One May, we traipsed through Ringing nestlings in County Galway Chris Benson welcomed by the Vaughan family. floodwater on Tower callow, in Galway across from Committee meetings used to take place on every Yellow Takkies John Carey Banagher, checking out a Woodlark report, to be first Wednesday of the month, usually in the bar; from confronted with a singing Skylark with no tail. The Congrats from BirdWatch HQ Niall Hatch the mid-1980s they became more formal and were most convenient bird watching spectacle is to view held on the second or third Wednesday of the month, Birds in poetry Marianne ten Cate the Cormorant colony at close range west of and later they were opened up for all members to Rinmaher Point in Portumna Forest Park. Tony The Bird Atlas 2007-11 Brian Caffrey attend until they were abandoned earlier this year. Whilde gave me my first chance to walk and watch In relation to the Newsletter itself, a major change Birds of the Connemara hills Padraig Kearns birds on, and write about, the Shannon Callows for was the out-sourcing of the distribution of Wings . his and Marianne’s comprehensive 1982 Irish The Barn Owl Research Project John Lusby From 2003 we had to either post or e-mail the Wetlands Survey , for which I have always been very Newsletter to our members as it could no longer be My Galway connections Dermot Breen grateful. It sometimes seems that the Shannon inserted in Wings . Now, it is all done by e-mail. Callows belong to no county at all. However Galway Down the memory lane of birdwatching in Galway - My own involvement with the branch started when can claim Inishee Island, on which 18 pairs of a chat with May Cashman, Tuam Willi Kiefel I joined a very active educational sub-committee. Redshank successfully bred in 2010 (not too much During the Christmas school-holidays of the years The Magpie’s tale Martin Ryan down on the 25 pairs, productivity unknown, in 1987 1978-1980 the branch offered day-long courses for and a far greater percentage of the national Changes as the years go by Chris Peppiatt young people, which were attended by about 100 population today). A Curlew pair was successful there youngsters each! Responding to the interest among Birds I can identify myself - in 2011. Someone saw a Rose-coloured Starling at so many young people, the branch set up a very confessions of a birdwatcher’s son Eoin Sharkey very close quarters from his car at Clonmoylan, 890 successful Young Ornithologists’ Club, which hosted Whooper Swans inhabited the working, but flooded, Forthcoming programme Marianne ten Cate monthly talks and outings for its 79 members on Bord na Móna bog near Clonfert in February 2010, Saturday mornings during the winter months from Galway Bird Report, Quarter 2 2011 Chris Peppiatt Buzzards have arrived in Lawrencetown. The most 1981 till 1989. Later, educational projects were run by constant and arresting sound from my house has Gordon D’Arcy and me in the Gort and Oughterard been the croak of Ravens. areas in 1991, and in 1992 we received further our Stephen Heery CAIRDE EANLAITH NA GAILLIMHE BIRDWATCH GALWAY This is a local forum newsletter www.birdwatchgalway.org – contributions and comments SPECIAL 75 TH EDITION are most welcome. Distributed by e mail only Telephone: 086 1680856 e-mail: [email protected] Issue No. 75 Nov 2011 THE NEWSLETTER – HOW IT HAPPENED years as a halcyon period of my life. From those days marshy areas in Siberia and North America, migrating I hold a number of people in the highest regard, the south to Australisia and South America. The life of the Galway BirdWatch Newsletter mirrors foremost being Neil Sharkey. This quiet, determined In June 1919 Alcock and Brown made the first the development of personal computers and other man has been a catalyst and an innovator of all that non-stop transatlantic flight. It ended when they such innovations.