 I'm delighted now that Angus Kennedy of Nature Northwest is with us and with us in the studio, which is the first time in well since forever, which is great Angus, so welcome along. Thanks very much John, it's nice to be back face to face. Yeah, absolutely. And nice to see a bit of good weather as well, we're going to chat about the outdoors, so it's nice to see just kind of looking at the window there, seeing just blue sky. Yeah, it's lovely, it's really warm though, the car was reading 19 degrees there a few minutes ago, and it feels more than that. We're finally getting a bit of the heat, they're getting blasted with heat in Europe, my goodness the heat waves there are ferocious, we need to remind ourselves of that on the grayer days and the cooler days, we're lucky where we are really, but today is just gorgeous. Because we keep on about, oh it'd be great to get a good spell, it would be great to get a nice sunny spell and you know, I get out and make the most of the beaches and all the rest of it, but you know, overall we can't complain, if we were sitting in Spain or France at the moment, we would have plenty to complain about it. Well in Spain, yeah and in Spain they're rationing the air conditioning, because the amount of power that's been used, people are using too much power, too much electricity to try and keep themselves cool, so it's kind of a vicious circle, when it gets to a certain heat, well then they need to cut back on the energy use and the rest of it, so it's a lot of people suffering there, so we should be grateful and it's also something we need as a country to be planning for in the future, we need to be looking at our water reserves, for whom we do have droughts, we saw the fodder crisis a couple of years ago that we had and we need to be putting our own plans in place for that, you know, but that heat is very damaging for nature, not just for people. The swifts in Spain and south of France are in ferocious trouble and a lot of the swifts are unfortunate, it's very sad to see and to read about, but the chicks are throwing themselves out of their nests, they tend to nest high up in buildings and eaves of buildings and it just gets too hot, once the temperature goes over 40 degrees, it's too hot for them, they can't cool down, like we can't, they can't perspire like we can, they're more like a dog, they pant and they can only get out so much heat by panting, so the chicks are throwing themselves out of the nests before they can fly and of course they can't, they can't lift themselves off the ground and they're very vulnerable. And they're in small confined spaces so you know it heats up I suppose a lot quicker. Yeah, an awful lot quicker, tiny little spaces and normally that wasn't an issue, you might get these great heats a little bit later on in Spain and France and whatnot, but not this early in the air and normally by the time those heat waves would kick in and the big temperatures would kick in the swifts would be in the air, they'd be flying, so that's where they're getting into mother. How long does it take for them to be able to fly? How many weeks? It takes about four weeks, four weeks and swifts are quite incredible, the opposite problem up here sometimes is a summer storm might come or some bad weather might come and the parents mightn't be able to get enough food and swifts are known to fly around storm systems and so they can sense the weather that's there, they can sense the air pressure it's believed that's there and if a bad enough storm is coming they will take to the air and they'll just fly around it which is quite amazing the parents, so the chicks are able to go into a kind of torpor, kind of like a half hibernation thing where all their body functions slows right down, so it means they're using very little energy so they can survive for a few days without food basically until those parents come back, the weather gets better, the insects are on the wing again, so they're an incredible bird. They're an incredible bird indeed and their name actually in Latin translates as without feet and they don't really need feet and all you've chatted about them before on the show but they live in the sky, they don't land. They don't land and people often talk about something that's not of this earth you know and I think when it comes to nature the swift is probably closest to that and because the swifts that you'll see in towns all over Donegal at the moment and Letter Kenney in Donegal town in Remelton in Milford and so many different places, I'm up and in the show and peninsula as well, they haven't landed since last year since they left their nest sites last year they leave their nest site after a few weeks and take to the air and then after another couple of weeks of hanging around and being fed and learning and training how to hunt insects in the air they then head off with their parents off to Africa and they fly around Africa and they do not land for about 10 months because they come here at the end of May and then they go at the end of August so they're only here for a few months only here for a few weeks really yeah that's it it's very very short time so it's purely just here to breed and insects is what they eat and nothing but insects and they're assigned to the amount of insect life that is out there and is high above our heads that we don't know of so many spiders for instance just distribute themselves or spread around the place by launching up into the air on the windy day and then all the different midges and all the different kind of flies that we see in the evening time they feed on that's what they're feeding on they're able to drink in in the air so they catch raindrops in the air they catch their nesting material in the air so if you get to see one of the webcams that has cameras on a swift nest you'll see little feathers and little bits of cobwebs and bits of dust that they've gathered from the air to line their their nest it's quite incredible and they often fly in twos or maybe fours yeah so they'll stick in little groups and they won't breed until they're at least two years old possibly three years old so swifts have been have been watched for for generations and generations but there's big interest in them now because they're so beautiful they're so amazing and also the the numbers are intertwined there's a lot of studying going on so they call the swifts that aren't breeding but are checking out the sites and you'll see swifts in the towns now you'll see them flying right up high up onto the eaves of a building but they won't go in they'll go up they'll look and they'll fly away and they'll look and they'll fly away they call those swifts the bangers because they seem to bang against the edge of the of the building and just checking out an nest site and getting familiar with a nest site and then another year or two they'll be old enough to breed and they'll use that little nest site and when they do find a place to nest they come back there every year to the same place every year every year and if you have had the eaves repaired on your house so blocking up any little holes because they'll go just underneath the roof underneath the tiles kind of thing that's where they go and if you have that repaired like a lot of older buildings are getting repaired at the moment they will come back for at least four years attempting to go to the same site the very face of the same site and the site kind of is stuck in their head you know and the fact that they come back here to breed I suppose you know the swifts would be calling this their home and we should we should see this as a home for swifts absolutely this is their home and so they're irish swifts they head off elsewhere and they fly around elsewhere following the seasons looking for bugs but they don't even land anywhere else the only place that they touch salad anything salad is in Ireland is here I think it's it's on us to make sure that for the few weeks that they do come we make sure we provide a habitat so somewhere for them to breed and also that there's enough food there for them well there's that's the two problems a habitat and their food the food because intensive farming farming practices have improved over the year it become more intensive and they have less food and then their their habitat their numbers have actually declined over 40 percent in the last 15 years so that is you know that's that's a shocking statistic and they and it's because our building methods have become modern as well and they don't have as many wee nooks and crannies and there's not as many old buildings they've been you know refurbished or knocked down so they have less places to nest less places to nest and sometimes when we hear these stories people can feel a bit hopeless and they think oh this is a disaster and you know the numbers are going down so quickly but there is things that we can all do and you mentioned intensive farming in Donegal we're lucky the way that our landowners look after the land to a large extent an awful lot of the hedgerows in so many parts of Donegal are still healthy they're they're they're alive they're well they're thriving and that gives a home to insect life and that's so so important keeping that network of hedgerows and little damp patches and ponds and whatnot where where it's possible to do on your land be it in your garden or your farm but we do that to a large extent one of the reasons that swifts come back here to Donegal but then for the homeowners in towns if you are getting repairs done to your house which is you're perfectly entitled to do and put up some swift boxes and you'll find plans for them online you'll find plans for them on my own website i'll direct towards them towards some easy plans and they're really easy to make you buy them from bird white terran or you can buy them and you just fit them underneath the eaves and the bird doesn't make a mess doesn't chew any wires doesn't do any that kind of thing and but you'll be helping conserve a bird and that's in big trouble if you put in one of these bird boxes are they noisy when they're here are they are they very noisy a little bit they're sometimes called the screaming swift so as they're flying they they they make an amazing screaming sound and people probably be familiar with that they're like the swallows and like the house martins that come the swallows that go into the barn and the house martins that builds the little mud house on the edge of the edge of your building but these guys are all black and they're even faster than those characters and you'll hear their high-pitched sound their high-pitched calling sound but at night time they don't call they don't make any noise and they won't they won't be moving around the nest nearly as much as say starlings or sparrows might be if they were under the eaves of your house so they're not as noisy as a lot of other birds that would nest once they're in the box you'll hardly know they're there and but the sound of them it's anytime i am watching a tv program that features something in the mediterranean i'll often smile because i'll hear the swifts in the background they're just such a huge sound to that kind of habitat and it's a sound that should be so common here in ireland but it's it's slowly slipping away so if we're building a renovate and we're not going to leave a little hole here there just so swifts can get in so the answer is a special bird box a special bird box so some countries in europe it's the law you have to put in what they call swift bricks and they're hollow bricks so right up at the very top just ideally north facing yeah north facing absolutely yeah although they will go into all sorts of different sides but north works them and you'd put in a couple of these little hollow bricks right up at the top underneath underneath the roof if you were building a house from scratch or doing some major repairs if you were doing some smaller repairs you can easily get the wooden boxes and you can fit them in if if people want to see a bit more of them if you look up the gmit gmit's website and if you put into google gmit swift boxes and they have some live swift boxes which you can look at right now and i think there's three swift nests currently live as we speak and you can see these incredible little birds sitting in their in their little nest site and that's the only time that they're touching anything solid wonderful now moving on from the swifts according to a new study restoring native predators like lynx cats could help invasive animals or keep invasive animals in check for instance the the seca deer has been listed as a great threat to global biodiversity now this is thanks to research that was led by queen university in belfast and it says that reintroducing animals like lynx cats and maybe wolves in europe could help to limit rabies as well now it's a slightly controversial uh issue uh rewilding we i mean we're no one's the topic it's been a huge success here in dunnigal with the golden eagles but putting in lynx or wolves straight away when you hear about the predators you're going on hold on a second here just let later take care of itself yeah you're right it's more than slightly controversial um and sometimes conservation movements or environmental movements can shoot themselves in the foot a little bit by uh by talking about these kind of projects because people who uh who might be tuned into it they'll link onto that or they'll grab onto that the idea of wolves in the hills uh or lynx in the hills and they think of a dangerous kind of creature what are these people talking about but we forget exactly as you say the golden eagle project has been successful the white-tailed eagle project very successful red kites have also been brought back so we are reintroducing things um and when things are reintroduced that there's there's a lot of study a lot of science put behind it and you can't um there's a responsibility to the animals that you're reintroducing as well as everything else um so they can't be just brought back and kind of released and said good luck it seems like a good idea something like wolves and lynx i can't see it happening uh when wolves and lynx were in ireland well wolves were in ireland up until the 1700s um but ireland was much more wooded and you gotta remember that ireland's natural state is woodland an awful lot of ireland was woodland and would turn back into woodland i forgot the chance again so there wouldn't have been as many farm animals around then it wouldn't have been as many sheep and cattle for instance nothing like so so the clash and much less people too so the clash between people um and nature wasn't excuse me wasn't it wasn't as strong the lynx has been gone for a very long time and the lynx was more um an ice age type stuff um around about then there hasn't been lynx in ireland for for an awful long time really and yes they in parts of the world they would be able to control deer our deer populations have them uh are climbing and climbing and climbing and they don't have the natural predators so it's up to the likes of the national parks to organize culls or to control the numbers in some way um but i think bringing in wild cats uh would be a step too far okay i love that at the moment of the day uh someone says uh gray lag geese along with baby geese have been seen in creased law before the lake it should come into creased laws and as you come in there in the left hand side walking on the road where would they have come from or where would they be going well there's two big questions um it's great to see them first we get uh we get quite a few different species of geese that come and visit us in the winter time uh including gray lag they come in their thousands from further north and they used to breed in ireland in much bigger numbers and the fact that we're seeing them on the side of the road in creased law uh is the sign of how we look after nature to to a certain extent anyway in dunagall and because the numbers are rising it's great to see they will tend to breed in uh in freshwater lakes um they'll tend to breed in anywhere that's kind of nice and close to close to water so they must have had some kind of little lake that they were breeding in and they're now on the way to try and find a bigger body of water for those chicks and keep them safe um unusual to find them uh find them stuck in a town like that but at this time of year people will sometimes come across the likes of ducks uh ducks will do something similar the mallards and whatnot they will breed um a little bit away from water but the chicks are very resilient uh and geese chicks are very resilient when they're when they're hatched as well and they're able to walk pretty much straight away they're able to waddle along and head to that body of water where they'll be safe great and uh recently well on a couple of occasions actually we were coming back from our walk and there was uh there's a pheasant just over the road from us and uh well i'm not saying it's tame but you'd you'd drive up uh like i slowed down when i'd see it just to admire it and then um normally with a pheasant it'd be you know flighty and they'd take off and then come anyway near them but this one you'd drive up fairly close before it would move away yeah the pheasants uh beautiful birds and there's a couple of different species of pheasants in Ireland now they're originally from Asia from China but they were brought in a long time ago and they're bred now for hunting um and that isn't always necessarily a bad thing sometimes people think oh oh you know hunting and shooting birds shouldn't be however quite often um certainly responsible gun clubs they do a lot of good nature work and they often create very good habitats which support many different types of species including the the pheasants if that's what they're after um but the pheasants are fed um so they're fed in their hand rear to a certain extent or farmed at least so the ones that escape if they're released for a shoot or if they just escape from the farm and they'll often be very tame i know i we have a pheasant that that comes up to us and comes up to our chicken feeders um and goes right into the chicken feeders and you can go well up to a few feet over you know okay so that makes sense yeah and if they do come and join in with your chickens uh enjoy them but watch out in the evening time because you'll see the chickens look on the pheasants because the pheasants will take off they can fly despite the their dumpy kind of size and look um they're they're quite good fliers quite strong fliers and they can take off nearly straight up it's amazing if they have to and you'll see the chickens you'll see your chickens looking at them and obviously in wonder as they go off to roost up in a tree okay okay brilliant stuff angus thanks a million and uh thanks for coming in um nature northwest dot ie for all sorts of information on what we've been chatting about and other things besides and uh next time you come back bring the bring feel free to bring the good weather back with you certainly try thanks john great to be here start playing ncbi radio bingo today treat chances of