Touchdown

A grey heron prepares to land on a rock along Salthil Promenade on a sunny September evening.

Galway is full of food, and not just for herons. For the last few weeks, shoals of mackerel can be seen shimmering the surface of the water along Salthill Promenade, and the lines of fishermen who turn up every evening have had a mighty harvest. It helps that, with the odd exception, the evenings in September have been sunny and warm.

There has been no sign of the dolphin that regularly swam and fed along the Prom for 5 or 6 weeks. Perhaps it has decided to rejoin its pod further out at sea. No sign either of a single gannet that fed at leisure along the prom during August (I originally got my bird names mixed up and had drafted a post entitled Single White Fulmar. Drat). I took some pictures of the gannet, but you’d be much better off looking at this brilliant image of gannets by Danny O’Brien [the birds are fighting over a mackerel].

Already, migrating geese are beginning to leave their northern summer habitats in Russian and Scandanavia and head south – soon, we’ll see them on the grass at South Park. And soon, the familiar clamour of whooping swans will echo around Rahasane.