Panel: Éanna Ní Lamhna & Niall Hatch

Reporters: Terry Flanagan & Richard Collins

In addition to listening to us on RTÉ Radio One at 22:00 every Monday night, don't forget that you can also listen back to each of our programmes any time you like at www.rte.ie/mooney. There, you will find an extensive archive of past broadcasts, conveniently split into different topics and segments.

Tonight’s programme features a report in which Terry Flanagan and Richard Collins pay a visit to a new vending machine in Dublin’s Blessington Street Basin that provides food for people to give to ducks. To help you to learn more about this intriguing piece of technology, our suggestion this week from the extensive Mooney Goes Wild archives is a programme from October 2024 which, amongst other things, features an interview with the Cork-based inventor of these avian food dispensers, Matthew Knight. Matthew is the founder of the Feed The Ducks Initiative, which has installed several of these vending machines across the UK and The Netherlands, as well now as here in Ireland.

To listen to this segment from the Mooney Goes Wild archives, visit https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/mooney/2024/1021/1476716-mooney-goes-wild-monday-21-october-2024/

April showers: something to celebrate

Though April showers may come your way

They bring the flowers that bloom in May

So if it’s raining, have no regrets

Because it isn’t raining rain, you know

It’s raining violets.

So sang Al Jolson in the 1921 song April Showers, reminding us that the inclement and unpredictable weather we often get in April is something to be grateful for.

And, now that April is upon us, all of us at Mooney Goes Wild are indeed extremely grateful, because April just so happens to be one of the most exciting months of all for nature. Flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing, butterflies are taking flight and migrant birds, such as the Cuckoo and the Swallow, are due to arrive any day now. The world is suddenly becoming a brighter, more colourful and more musical place.

The changes which April brings to the natural world have long been a source of inspiration for poets, as Éanna so eloquently reminds us on tonight’s programme by reciting the 1845 poem Home-Thoughts, from Aboard by English poet Robert Browning, written during a springtime trip to Italy while he was missing home:

Oh, to be in England

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!

Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children's dower

—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

For more information about some of the key natural highlights you can observe in Ireland during the month of April, visit https://irelandswildlife.com/irelands-wildlife-calendar-april/

Wasps in glasshouses shouldn’t grow domes!

We received an email recently from listener Libby O’Toole, accompanied by some very interesting photos. The photos in question were taken in her glasshouse and show a very intricate and elaborate wasps’ nest. It’s not the normal round or dome-shaped nest that we usually associate with these highly social insects, however, but an oddly elongated, almost linear, construction, running horizontally along the beams of wood that separate the side panes from the roof.

As Éanna informs us on tonight’s programme, in this case necessity was the mother of invention. Presumably, the wasps were unable to stick the chewed-up wood pulp from which they build their nests to the smooth surfaces of the glass, so had to confine their efforts to the wooden surfaces on which their masticated papier-mâché could adhere, hence the odd shape.

For more information about wasps’ nests, visit https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/why-do-wasps-build-nests.html

Jack Snipe: one of the most secretive Irish birds of all

We received another intriguing photo from listener Ger McEvoy, featuring a small bird that is famously very hard to spot . . . as is immediately clear from the photo itself! Can you see the bird?

It’s that tiny, dark-brown blob in the middle the image, marked with stripes that are the precise shape and colour of the pale stalks surrounding it. As Ger correctly suggested, it is a Jack Snipe, one of the most secretive birds in Ireland and a species that migrates here in unknown numbers each autumn to spend the winter, departing in spring to return to breeding grounds in the boreal bogs of Northern Europe and Asia.

The Jack Snipe is a smaller relation of the better-known Common Snipe, a species which can be found in Ireland year-round and which, though still secretive and well-camouflaged, is typically easier to see than its more diminutive cousin. One of the key reasons for this is that, when approached by a person, dog or other potential threat, a Common Snipe will flush up from the ground when the perceived predator is still many metres away, revealing its presence. A Jack Snipe, by contrast, will sit tight until it is almost about to be trodden on, meaning that flushing one is a much rarer occurrence and most go totally unnoticed.

If a Jack Snipe does flush, it climbs rapidly into the sky, then plummets back to Earth a fairly short distance away, its flight forming a smooth arc. A Common Snipe behaves in a much more erratic fashion, however, flying further away and zig-zagging rapidly from side to side as it does so. This has earned the Common Snipe a reputation for being one of the hardest gamebirds for a hunter to shoot in flight. The ability to hit one has long been considered the hallmark of a particularly skilled marksman, which is why those shooters who were deemed the best of the best became known as snipers.

For more information about the Jack Snipe, visit https://birdwatchireland.ie/birds/jack-snipe/

Ridding Killarney National Park of Rhododendrons

We have reported many times over the years on the havoc that has been wrought on the woodlands of Killarney National Park in Co. Kerry by a highly problematic invasive alien species. Common Rhododendron, or Rhododendron ponticum to botanists, is native to Turkey and other parts of western Asia and was widely planted in Ireland due to its attractive purple-pink flowers.

The species quickly escaped from gardens and found the rich, damp, oak woodlands of Killarney very much to its liking, choking native plant species, blocking the light and seriously damaging and degrading fragile habitats. To date, many millions of euro have been spent by the State on efforts to try to combat and control the infestation of this noxious plant in the national park, with limited success.

But it appears that a more effective and efficient solution may now be at hand, with the recent purchase of two new state-of-the-art flailing machines for the park. On tonight’s programme, we speak to Eamonn Meskell, Divisional Manager with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, about the extent of the rhododendron problem, the difficulties he and his colleagues have had in eradicating it and how this new investment in specialised machinery has the potential to be a game-changer.

For more information about the severe problems caused by rhododendron in Killarney National Park, visit https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/rhododendron-an-ecological-disaster-in-killarney-national-park-1.3894358

Hoopoe invasion!

Over the past couple of weeks, the southern counties of Ireland have experienced an influx of another exotic-looking and colourful species, though one that is far more welcome than the rhododendron. Unusual weather conditions prompted the arrival of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Hoopoes, migratory birds that look more like cartoon characters than a creature one might encounter in real life.

The Hoopoe must be one of the most distinctive birds that it is possible to see in Ireland. Their bodies are mainly pink, but their broad wings are striped black-and-white, not unlike a zebra, and give it the aspect of a huge butterfly when in flight. The beak is long, pointed and strongly down-curved, not too dissimilar to that of a small Curlew, and it sports a bizarre, fan-like crest on its head, which it can raise and lower at will. Hoopoes look extremely striking, and they also happen to smell terrible, a trait which may have evolved to make them less palatable to predators.

It is believed that these Hoopoes, which have recently returned from their African wintering quarters to breed in Europe, accidentally overshot northern France on their migration, then stopped off along our south coast, particularly in Cos. Cork and Waterford, to rest and feed for a few days before returning over the sea to their Gallic nesting grounds. Hundreds of people reported sightings of them to BirdWatch Ireland, having spotted them feeding on their lawns, flying across golf courses or perched on roadside fences.

For more information about the recent influx of Hoopoes into Ireland, visit https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/04/02/hoopoes-overshoot-france-and-land-in-ireland-and-britain/

Corvid intelligence

We spoke recently on the programme about the almost unbelievable intelligence of crows, which prompted listener Paddy Ennis to send us a video which he shot in his back garden in Portadown, Co. Antrim. It shows a Rook, one of the most common and familiar members of the crow family in Ireland, devising an ingenious solution to the problem of extracting nuts from Paddy’s hanging garden bird feeder.

As Paddy’s video shows, the Rook cannot reach far enough to take a nut out of the feeder; its beak will only extend as far as one of the perches at the bottom. What the bird does next is fascinating. Having considered its options, it pulls the perch towards it, then lets it go, causing the feeder to swing like a pendulum. On the return swing, the clever corvid can then stick its beak into the feeding port and pull out a nut as the feeder swings back in the opposite direction.

What’s more, the Rook gets better and better at this trick as time goes on, learning from experience and honing its new-found skill. It really is a remarkable piece of footage which proves that, for crows as well as humans, practice really does make perfect.

For more information about Rooks, visit https://birdwatchireland.ie/birds/rook/

Duck feeders

There are lots of public parks across the city of Dublin, but a favourite for many people is the "Secret Garden" or, as it is officially called, Blessington Street Basin. A little hideaway, tucked away just behind Blessington Street, it is a lovely quadrangular walk around a beautiful artificial lake which once served as a source of drinking water for the city and was also, up until 1976, a source of water to produce whiskey.

The lake attracts many birds of different species, including swans and ducks. This, in turn, has encouraged visitors to feed these birds, mostly with white bread, which is not an ideal foodstuff for waterfowl.

To improve the birds’ diets, a brand new duck-food vending machine has been installed beside the lakeshore. A card payment of €1 will dispense a quantity of food pellets with which to feed to the birds. For tonight’s programme, Terry Flanagan and Richard Collins went along to try it out for themselves.

For more information about Blessington Street Basin, visit https://www.dublincity.ie/residential/parks/dublin-city-parks/visit-park/blessington-street-basin

For more information about the Feed The Ducks Initiative and its duck-food vending machines, visit https://www.feedducks.com/