Bird Atlas

The Bird Atlas finished up a few weeks ago and to be honest I'll miss going out for hours on end recording everything I see and hear.  I've really come to appreciate what a great county Meath is for not just birding but nature in general.

Okay I haven't recorded any mega's for the Atlas but I have pretty much recorded every species you would expect to see (and a few you wouldn't) whilst covering the county.  I had hoped to cover more at the beginning way back in '07 but after four years I can be happy with the contribution I've made.

I of course covered Ashbourne and the immediate environs of Donaghmore, Kilbride and across to the outskirts of Ratoath.  I also covered from Kilbride across to Bracetown and moving North in the county I covered some more tetrads up Skreene direction and again the surrounding areas up to Kentstown.

All the usual suspects cropped up as and when you'd expect but each field trip usually threw up one or two sightings which made the effort all the more worthwhile; short-eared owls, a cuckoo, an occasional peregrine or an even more occasional brambling and surely the record which most pleased  me.... a barn owl.

So what has four years of covering (and trespassing) as many lanes, fields and tracks around the county taught me?  We'll for sure some species are absolutely thriving in the county, namely all the corvids, the buzzard population, the pigeon and dove populations all appear not to have suffered too badly over the last two harsh winters.  But there's a pattern here isn't there?  They're all what you'd call large in size, not too many LBJ's in that list, so what about their smaller cousins?

Well I'd have to say the last two winters have been very tough on the county's population of small birds.  Some species have been notable for their lack of appearance over the last couple of years, notably the yellowhammer a species I could usually walk to any one of dozens of sites and be guaranteed a sighting and song but alas no more, sightings have become much rarer than once were.  Add to that list the greenfinch, blue and great tit, dunnock, wren, bullfinch, goldfinch..... you get the picture.  All of these birds were to coin a phrase I've used somewhere before "cheap as chips", not over the last couple of winter and breeding seasons they weren't.



House sparrow, Ashbourne



However one little brown bird, the house sparrow appears to have fared better than most!  I can't say I've noticed any great decrease in their numbers, perhaps there were just so many of them to start with that they have become a little more obvious over the absence of so many others, I'd like to think not, I'd like to think that somehow this most unassuming of the LBJ's managed somehow to beat the conditions.