Having a wild time in the city

DESPITE being one of Ireland’s smallest counties and overrun by people, Dublin is remarkably well endowed when it comes to wildlife.

It has four estuaries with internationally important concentrations of birds. Rockabill, off Skerries, holds Europe’s largest colony of roseate terns, a species endangered worldwide, while tens of thousands of guillemots nest on Lambay. Two of Ireland’s six gannet colonies are on islands off the Dublin coast; the one at Ireland’s Eye is just 11km from the centre of the capital.

With such riches in the rural part of the county, the wildlife of the city tends to be overlooked. However, Dublin has one of the best documented natural histories of any city in the world.