Jim Wilson

Yeah, Ciarán, nice to talk to you.

Yeah, the Nature Reserve Harpers Island Wetlands has been in existence since 2017.

And a housing estate went up across the road from the entrance some time ago.

And since then, we've been noticing not many, two or three cats

hunting or roaming on the nature reserve and it's not the first time we've had a cat take an interest in the nesting burrows that we have set up for these long distance migrants as you rightly pointed out and this time Alex Olinchik who's a regular visitor was there enjoying the sand martins and watching them come and go and next thing this cat appears

and was able to leap and jump up and stick its head into a number of the burrows.

And it does explain some phenomenon that we've been experiencing, especially this season.

This is the bottom row of three rows of nesting burrows.

And we've noticed burrows being abandoned, you know, with eggs in them and things like that, which we didn't notice so much in previous years.

And we now feel that it is probable that

this cat or other cats were actually creating such a disturbance and when the birds are just starting to settle down, that's the time they're more likely to abandon this whole affair because it's not worth it.

It's better to live till next year and have another family rather than risk being killed and that was the case.

So,

So that's where that came from.

And Ella obviously must have seen it.

We have a number of WhatsApp groups and social media presence as well.

And that's where that came from.

And we couldn't believe it.

So we've tried to put in a system to exclude the cats from doing this again.

But I'm sure the owners are totally unaware, probably, of that.