Hi Wim,
As an expatriate Irishman living in Australia, I enjoy your Irish
Impressions. You write so well that it is like walking with you along
the clifftop or past the estuary.
You commented on the lack of Buzzards, B. buteo, in apparently suitable
habitat. Until 1990, sheep farmers in the Irish Republic were allowed
to use strychnine as bait for foxes. I don't know whether it had any
effect on the fox population, but the only breeding buzzards in Ireland
for most of the 20th century were about 20 pairs hanging on on Rathlin
Island in Co Antrim, which is about as far as you can get from the Irish
border and still be in Ireland geographically. Since strychnine was
banned, the Buzzard population is recovering and expanding south and
west from Antrim. I don't think they have got as far as Co Cork yet,
but last year they were breeding certainly as far south as Co Dublin in
the East and I have seen several in Co Donegal and one in Co Louth.
Maybe if you come back to Co Cork in a few years, the skies above
Ballycotton too will have regained one of their former denizens. In the
meantime, you have a better chance of finding another elusive Irish
raptor, the Hen (Northern) Harrier in the southern counties, Cork in
particular.
Best wishes, Ian
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