8th Irish Ornithological Research Conference

Patrick Smiddy worked for the National Parks & Wildlife Service for almost 30 years and has been involved in Irish ornithology for over 50 years. He is a former member of the Irish Rare Birds Committee, co-author (with Oran O’Sullivan) of ten Irish Bird Reports and edited the journal Irish Birds from 2010 to 2017. He has a broad interest in natural history, especially ornithology, and has studied Dippers, Grey Wagtails, Barn Swallows and Acrocephalus warblers, among other species; his subjects of interest include wetland and river birds, breeding biology, feeding ecology (owls, birds of prey and corvids) and migration. He has published widely in national and international peer-reviewed journals, including several book chapters. His most recent publication is a book on The Birds of County Cork (2022, Cork University Press) with co-authors Mark Shorten and Russ Heselden. Now retired, he is an honorary research associate with University College Cork Ornithology Group.

David Cabot was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and moved to Devon, England, with his family in 1946 where he attended the progressive co-educational School at Dartington Hall. He studied Zoology at University College Oxford and then Trinity Collège Dublin. While at Trinity he started his long-term population studies on barnacle geese, fulmars, cormorants and other seabirds. After working for the BBC for three years he took a junior lecturing post in NUIG, where he completed his PhD on helminth parasites in Charadriiform birds. He worked for near 20 years at An Foras Forbartha in Dublin. With the abolition of the Institute he set up a documentary film company before working as an environmental consultant in Eastern Europe, assisting candidate countries towards their membership of the EU. He has published several books and numerous scientific papers. He continues his primary research interest into the population dynamics of the Greenland barnacle goose which has led him three times to NE Greenland and recently to Iceland to study their breeding biology.

Sinéad Cummins is an ornithologist within the Birds Unit of the Scientific Advice and Research Directorate of the NPWS.  A former graduate of University College Cork, one of her first jobs was with BirdWatch Ireland on the Upland Breeding Wader Survey back in 2003 where she learned just how challenging wader surveys on blanket bogs can be during an Irish summer. Sinéad and her colleagues in NPWS have responsibilities which include providing support for bird monitoring and surveys, species management and protection and provision of specialist scientific advice. NPWS has also fostered close links with researchers in Ireland and further afield.  Such collaboration is incredibly beneficial in helping bridge knowledge gaps (e.g. on species ecology, population, distribution), and to inform targeted bird species management and conservation, protected area designations and to underpin policy decisions.

Internationally, Killian Mullarney is Ireland’s best-known ornithologist. This is largely due to his outstanding skills as a bird illustrator and how he has used his artwork to address major problems in field identification. He, Dan Zetterstrom and Lars Svensson authored and illustrated the Collins Bird Guide which is widely regarded as one of the finest bird guides ever produced. Killian was invited by An Post to produce a set of stamps of some bird species in Ireland between 1997 and 2004. With the late Peter Grant he produced The New Approach to Identification, and this work continues. Killian and his co-authors are revising the Little, Least and Saunders Tern complex. Lately Killian has addressed issues relating to aging different bird species, especially shorebirds – in the field which will be of considerable use to those working on quantification, recruitment and survival. An outstanding field ornithologist Killian has recently added the Greater Sand Plover and the Vega Gull to the Irish list.