Little bird finds a home amid all the noise in Dublin

A tree in Dublin’s St Anne’s Park, just opposite the famous Bull Island, became unsafe and had to be cropped. 

The City Council, in an inspired move, commissioned tree sculptor Tommy Cragg to transform the 10m high dead trunk into a celebration of wildlife. He has created a beautiful tableau of mammals birds and reptiles, now much admired and photographed.

The work also received the endorsement of an unlikely little creature. While the sculptor worked with his noisy chainsaws, a pair of tree-creepers arrived, inspected the tree and found a crevice in which they began building a nest. Everything was done to avoid disturbing the birds, but the work had to go on. To everyone’s surprise, the tree-creepers ignored the mayhem. Eggs were laid, incubated and hatched. All went well and, a month or so later, a brood of eager young fledglings took wing.