Photo credit: Casrsten Evegang/PA Wire, The Irish Times

Least we forget that our marine life is limited to the terrestrial and aquatic zones, we host an impressive selection of birds who live out their lives, or parts of them along our coasts.

They can be big like the sometimes coastal winter migrant whooper swan, 2 of which beat a low flightpath past me last week as I waited for waves outside Doughmakone Strand. They can also be tiny and impressively migrant as the Irish Times reports today of The Arctic Tern. They make a round trip of 44,000 miles, pole to pole to be comprehensively  global, spending months between March and Septmeber on our shores.

Similar to The Common Tern, but smaller, it is considered to have the longest migration of all birds, as The Irish Times reports, making journeys over the course of its lifetime equal to three trips to the moon. Read the article here.

Read Birdwatch Ireland’s species profile here.