Panel: Richard Collins & Niall Hatch

Reporters: Terry Flanagan & Michele Browne

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 discussion about an apparent sighting of a Hazel Dormouse in Bellharbour in Co. Clare. These tiny, non-native rodents appear to be spreading in Ireland, following their accidental introduction to Co. Kildare a few years ago, and may soon be coming to a woodland near you.

With that in mind, our suggestion from the Mooney Goes Wild archives this week is a segment all about the discovery and establishment of these minuscule murids in Ireland, first broadcast in February of this year.

To listen to this segment from the Mooney Goes Wild archives, visit https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/22491304-hazel-dormouse-in-co-kildare/

Thank you!

We would like to start by extending our heartfelt gratitude to all of you, our loyal listeners, who have been in touch by letter, email, text message and even birthday card to congratulate Mooney Goes Wild on its 30th Anniversary. Since May 1995, Derek and his team have been bringing natural history news, reports and insights to the Irish airways, and it simply would not have been possible without your support. We love creating this programme for you and celebrating the wildlife wonders of the world with our listeners every week, and your kind words and warm messages mean a great deal to us. Many, many thanks.

To listen to Colm Flynn’s special documentary celebrating 30 years of Mooney Goes Wild, visit https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22510643/

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

You don’t encounter World War II Forces’ Sweetheart Vera Lynn on the radio too often these days, but you will hear her dulcet tones on tonight’s programme. Why? Well, it’s all to do with a recording that Niall made for us during his recent trip to the French Riviera. Not a recording of Vera Lynn – she died in 2020 at the grand old age of 103 – but of a bird that she, and many other famous vocalists of her era, sang about: appropriately enough, one of the finest songsters in the bird world; namely, the Nightingale.

While Nightingales may no longer sing in Berkeley Square, they certainly do still sing in the south of France, where, as Niall tells us, they are actually still fairly common. Famously, they tend to sing through the night, but on his recent trip to Mandelieu-La Napoule he used his phone to record one singing in broad daylight . . . and what a song it is! The vocal gymnastics of the Nightingale are amongst the most impressive in the avian world, and on tonight’s programme we tell you more about these remarkable birds, their impressive singing ability and their surprisingly drab appearance and shy, retiring nature.

By the way, in a most serendipitous turn of events, it transpires that the song that Vera Lynn sang about the bird – A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square – was actually composed in the south of France, in the small fishing village of Le Lavandou, less than 100 km from where Niall made his recording of the bird for tonight’s programme.

For more information about Nightingales, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_nightingale

Hazel Dormouse in Co. Clare

Recently, we received an email from Mooney Goes Wild listener Rosaleen [INSERT SURNAME] in Bellharbour, Co. Clare, which read as follows:

An unusual gingery-coloured creature was sighted in Bellharbour last autumn in

my neighbour’s porch. By the time she got her phone to take a snap, it was gone. It

was only recently it was discovered to have been a dormouse. It seems to have

been hibernating/nesting in vegetation beneath a Buddleia tree, just outside the

front door of her cottage. There are many trees and shrubs in the garden. I

understand these are rare in these parts.

The creature in question – a Hazel Dormouse – is indeed very rare in Rosaleen’s neck of the woods. These tiny rodents are not native to Ireland, but in recent years an expanding population has been discovered in Co. Kildare, presumably the result of an accidental introduction as stowaways in animal food, nursery plants or some other vegetation imported from Britain or continental Europe. They have been spreading, but this record in Co. Clare would still represent a major shift in the species’ distribution.

On tonight’s programme, we talk about the newest rodents to call Ireland home, how they differ from "true" mice and whether their spread across Ireland will continue.

For more information about Hazel Dormice and efforts to monitor their occurrence and spread in Ireland, visit https://wildgaia.org/projects/new-species/irish-dormouse-monitoring-project

Breeding Wader EIP: saving some of Ireland’s most endangered birds

As regular listeners to Mooney Goes Wild will know, the birds known collectively as waders are amongst the most severely threatened breeding species in Ireland. Some of our most iconic and enigmatic birds – amongst them the Curlew, the Redwing and the Lapwing – are at very real risk of extinction here, as disturbance, predation and rapid changes to their habitats have wrought havoc on their nesting efforts.

But it’s not too late, and serious conservation work is currently underway to support and increase Ireland’s breeding wader population. The Breeding Wader European Innovation Partnership (EIP) is a €25 million nationwide project, co-funded by the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, which aims to secure existing Breeding Wader populations and support population recovery through landscape management and policy development.

For tonight’s programme, our roving reporter Terry Flanagan travelled to the shores of Lough Ree to speak to Owen Murphy, Senior Project Manager with the Breeding Wader EIP, and Dana Neill, one of the project’s Nest Protection Officers, about these remarkable birds, the threats they face and the efforts underway to save them.

For more information about the Breeding Wader EIP, visit https://breedingwaders.ie/

Zombie Spiders

We know that a great many of you happen to have a fear of spiders . . . so you might not be thrilled to learn that Ireland now has "zombie spiders" to contend with! They definitely sound like something from a horror movie, but they are real and have been found living in a cave between Co. Cavan and Co. Fermanagh.

Speleologists Tim and Pam Fogg are the husband-and-wife team who first discovered several Common Cave Spiders in White Father’s Cave that had been infected with a fungus which takes control of their bodies and forces them to come out of their normal hiding-places in the crevices of the cave walls. It then kills them, out in the open, causing fungal spores to spread in the drafts which circulate in the cave, infecting yet more spiders and continuing the grim cycle.

This was too good a story for us to pass up, so Mooney Goes Wild researcher Michele Browne was dispatched to White Father’s Cave to meet up with Tim and Pam in order to find out more.

For more information about zombie spiders, visit https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2025/0204/1494596-zombie-spiders/

Paying tribute to Michael O’Meara

Last week, the very sad news reached us that Michael O’Meara, a luminary in the world of Irish wildlife and a wonderful chronicler and custodian of the flora and fauna of Co. Waterford, had died. On tonight’s programme, Éanna Ní Lamhna joins us in studio to pay tribute to her dear friend. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.

Join us on Monday 2nd June for a Blooming good time!

If you have a keen interest in gardening or food (or, like us, both), there is a good chance that Bord Bia Bloom is an annual fixture in your diary. This year, Ireland’s largest festival of flowers, food and family fun will be running in Dublin’s Phoenix Park from Thursday 29th May to Bank Holiday Monday 2nd June, and it’s shaping up to be the biggest and best one yet.

Derek and his team will be broadcasting a very special live edition of Mooney Goes Wild from the festival between 15:00 and 16:00 on Monday 2nd June, so please be sure to tune in . . . or, if you happen to be at Bord Bia Bloom yourself that day, why not stop by to have a gawp at Derek and the gang in person?

For more information about Bord Bia Bloom, visit https://www.bordbiabloom.com/