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Lovely to see so much meadowsweet and dragonfly but sobering to see how dry our wetlands have become over the last few years. I also walked back on the second less used path to the car park. Enjoy the video 🙂

I got down to the Wetlands soon after 5 am the other day to record the dawn chorus.

I then ran this audio through the excellent Merlin free Android app that identifies bird from their songs.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.labs.merlinbirdid.app&hl=en&gl=US&pli=1

I haven’t got a clean audio recording of the above video but I did take a recording on my phone as I walked around. Here’s the analysis from the Merlin app.

You can try this for yourself by downloading the Merlin app and the importing the following audio file in the My Recordings section of the app

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XYJxv8nNztGwnru9bNjO8cS8rIZFaLSK/view?usp=drive_link

The cool thing about the app is you can click on the bird it has identified and it will take you to the time in the audio file it heard it! 🙂

The dry spell has really emptied the two ponds as you can see from these photographs though the yellow flag irises look lovely 🙂

Summer is underway but the days are pretty cool still. The buttercups are beautiful in the meadow areas and the trees are fully leaved. The large pond is overrun with bull rushes and the smaller one is pretty churned up. Lots of dog prints.

I had noticed last month a shopping trolley in one of the ponds. So I made sure I had wellies to retrieve it this month and my Shannon Tidy Towns litter picker and rubbish bags. So a community group crossover!

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And here’s a longer video as I collect cans and bottles around the ponds

Things starting to grow again and very mild weather.

https://www.clare.fm/featured-2/world-wetlands-day-set-celebrated-two-upcoming-events/

The weather held for us and we had a wonderful hour or so in the wetlands this afternoon. Pupils from both St Patrick’s Comprehensive (https://www.stpatrickscomprehensive.ie/) and Gaelscoil Donncha Rua (https://gdr.ie/). For me the highlight was when Ruairí from LAWPRO (https://lawaters.ie/) explained the sweet smell of otter (madra uisce) excrement! By passing some around 🙂

(PS. If you have photos and are posting them online please let us know and we will link to them. Thanks).

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Great interview is took place with our own Olive Carey and LAWPRO’s Ruairí Ó Conchúir (https://lawaters.ie/) regarding World Wetlands Day on Today FM this morning

What should be a very interesting interview is taking place with our own Olive Carey and LAWPRO’s Ruairí Ó Conchúir (https://lawaters.ie/) regarding World Wetlands Day. It I will on Clare FM Clare.fm on Wednesday morning at 9.45am as part of Morning Focus with Alan Morrissey. Enjoy thttps://www.clare.fm/on-air/morning-focus/

PLEASE NOTE NEW TIME OF 12:30PM (not 11:45am as before)
Exciting News! Great free event taking place in the Shannon Community Wetlands next Thursday lunchtime..

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