Irene O'Brien

Yeah, overgrazing is a big pressure on all our coastal sites.

So when you add all the pressures together, you're talking about a lot of threats and pressures on one area.

The birds should be doing well here, but unfortunately they're not.

There's a lack of cover for them for their nesting and there's also disturbance.

If you're close to an oyster catcher nest, they're quite aggressive, as you can see.

They're very vocal.

So, yeah, he's not happy with us.

So I normally like I wouldn't hang around.

And he probably has young chicks at the moment.

But I just walk the perimeter and just mark that down as a territory.

I mean, chicks are gone.

Yeah, you could cause... And I mightn't even know what happened.

Yeah, you could have the dog running around there and he could go over the nest, break the eggs, frighten the chicks.

We're in breeding season now and these guys have eggs and nests and they're actually defending their eggs and their nests.

So we're on the northwest side, so yeah, what we're looking out is the Atlantic Ocean there.

Yeah, and then in front of us then you can see Inishkee North and then way over there then you can see the North Mayo Coast.

Yeah, so, I mean, for a few years now, you know, we've known the numbers are getting bigger.

So I felt, how are we going to tackle this?

But this year I did get funding from our Conservation Measures Unit to get two wardens.

So I've contracted two wardens and they're both local people who would have a strong association to the island.