Get closer to the wild side of Ireland
Brian Caffrey, co-ordinator of BirdTrack for Irish partner organisation, Birdwatch Ireland, introduces this new tool for recording and managing your personal bird records, and contributing to a body of data that helps inform bird conservation on a local, regional, national and international level. BirdTrack (www.birdtrack.net) is an exciting project that looks at migration movements and [...]
Dr. Una Fitzpatrick, Ecologist with the National Biodiversity Data Centre, explains why we need to conserve our pollinators, and how you can help. The staggering value of pollination Pollination services provided by insects, mainly bees, have been valued at €153 billion a year. With 71 out of the 100 crops that provide 90% of food [...]
Birdwatch Ireland’s most popular “Citizen Science” project… the annual Garden Bird Survey… starts next Monday, 03 December. It’s a survey that anyone can take part in and its really easy to get involved here’s how Birdwatch Ireland explain it: The way the survey works is very straightforward… Between December and February each year, we ask [...]
Coastwatch is an annual “Eco-Audit” of Ireland’s shoreline that relies on “Citizen Scientists” like you to submit records from all around the Irish coast. 2012 marks the survey’s 25th anniversary in Ireland, and takes place between 15 September and 15 October [I know this post is a bit late... oops... but there's still plenty of [...]
The Irish Wildlife Trust (IWT) and wildlife records and mapping website Biology.ie have joined forces to encourage more people in Ireland to submit their wildlife sightings online. According to a post on the IWT website the hope is that the initiative will “contribute to the growing level of ‘citizen science’ in Ireland”. Visitors the the [...]
Dr Eugenie Regan from the National Biodiversity Data Centre introduces us to Ireland’s three species of earwig. Earwigs are an unloved group of insects. They generate reactions of disgust from the general public, are considered by most a pest, and are surely one of the reasons that insects have a bad name. But they are [...]
It was Sunday morning, and it was raining. Not just any kind of rain… it was that sneaky, endemically Irish drizzle that saturates you before you realise you’re getting wet. It was misery incarnate. Miserable or not, we had a job to do. I grabbed the gear, threw it in the car and off we [...]
With the early arrival of spring making headlines it looks like the Spring Alive website is back in action again. Every year Spring Alive tracks the progress of spring across Europe by asking people from across the continent to submit sightings of migrating spring birds – icons of seasonal change like the Swallow, Cuckoo and [...]
Biology.ie is an online personal biodiversity monitoring resource that was established in 2005 by naturalist Paul Whelan. The site lets you keep track of your personal wildlife sightings, and is a bit like an online field notebook with built in mapping and species lists that helps you to monitor what you see, when and where. [...]
The Irish Butterfly Monitoring Scheme has released its annual report for 2010. Established in 2007 by the National Biodiversity Data Centre, this Citizen Science project aims to improve our overall understanding of Irish butterfly species, their distribution and their population dynamics. Last year the scheme involved more than 140 volunteers around the country who contributed [...]
Connect with Ireland's Wildlife