A census with a difference has been carried out on Ireland's Eye off the coast of north Dublin as BirdWatch Ireland has been attempting to count the number of seabirds nesting on the uninhabited island.
As visitors to the island rise, a number of measures have also been put in place to give the species who breed there greater protection.
Located just 1.5km off the coast of Howth, the small rocky uninhabited island that was home to a monastic settlement over a thousand years ago, is now an important breeding ground for five species of seabirds; cormorant, herring gull, kittiwake, guillemot and razorbill.
Over the summer, BirdWatch Ireland carried out a census of the Special Area of Conservation, a task its Senior Seabird Conservation Officer Brian Burke says is done using both old fashioned shoe leather and newer technology.
"The birds use every little bit of the island, all the cliffs, under the boulders, in the grass, absolutely everywhere so it's really about finding every single bird.
"You do a preliminary census, you walk around, you try and figure out where everything is and do your reading on what was done before.
"Then it's just going out and just counting everything. Whether it's with binoculars and a piece of paper and writing things down, or this year, we've been using a drone, which has been very helpful.
"That's done under licence at the National Parks and Wildlife Service and that's a big help counting the birds on the cliffs.
"For example, we could take a photo, take that home and count 1,000 guillemots, which is much harder if you're on a boat going up and down and trying to catch that on binoculars."
The results of the survey are still being analysed but they show a mixed picture for the bird species who nest on Ireland's Eye.
"It's complex, in that there's a lot of different types of species that have different foraging behaviours.
"They rely on different types of fish and they nest in different parts of the island. Some species are up, some species are down.
"We know the gannets are doing very well and we have some concerns about species like shags and cormorant in Ireland and in parts of Dublin as well, they're maybe not doing so well.
"Kittiwake are a red listed species internationally, and their numbers have jumped up on Ireland's Eye this year, so we've been delighted to see that."
As the number of visitors to the island has increased in recent times, for the first time this summer wardens were also deployed on Ireland's Eye to ask visitors to avoid interfering with the seabirds.
Emmet Nyhan was part of the team who spent the summer patrolling the rocky outpost.
"It has been a problem before, children picking up eggs and moving them to different places.
"But in general it's people getting too close to birds and birds being disturbed off nests.
"They're gonna go off and that means the eggs won't develop, there won't be any chicks or if they do have chicks, they wouldn't be able to fend for themselves and chicks will die.
"Lots of people just simply don't know, it's not common knowledge that the birds nest very close to the path sometimes. It's just people getting a bit too close.
"They're not familiar with what a bird looks like when it's disturbed. So it might make a bit of noise or it might fly up."
A number of physical measures have also been put in place on the island to stop people accidentally disturbing seabird nests including fencing and signage.
Lorraine Bull, Executive Biodiversity Officer, Fingal County Council says it is aimed at protecting seabirds whose populations are under threat across the globe.
"We have had cases here where people have come to the island and are actually sitting amongst some of the cormorant nests.
"They're looking to get photograph of other birds, such as puffins or other species, and they're sitting there for prolonged periods.
"It's really to help give the birds some space and help protect their young. So some of the bird species will only have one chick, others might have two or three, and we want to ensure that as many of those chicks as possible fledge to increase bird populations here on Ireland's Eye."
Fingal County Council's biodiversity team are hoping to run the warden scheme on Ireland's Eye again next summer.
They will also analyse the data they have gathered from both the bird census and the monitoring of human behaviour on the island to see if any future measures are needed to protect bird population.
