Bird Life
There are on Lough Lene many bird species, in particular, Mute Swan, Teal, Pochard, Great Crested Grebe, Little Grebe, Tufted Duck, Grey Heron, Water Rail, Mallard, Goldeneye, Cormorant and Wigeon. Upon the surrounding lands are inhabited by Snipe, Lapwing and Curlew. Of particular significance is the Pochard population which, in the winters of 1995/1996 and 1996/1997, there were of national importance averaging 515 individual birds of this population.
Much of the lake shore is accessible to grazing cattle, goats, sheep and horses. Unpolluted hard-water lakes such as Lough Lene are becoming increasingly rare in Ireland and in Europe and are of a type that is listed upon the Annex of the E.U. Habitat Directive.
Read more about this topic: Lough Lene
Famous quotes containing the words bird and/or life:
“but as an Eagle
His cloudless thunderbolted on thir heads.
So vertue giv’n for lost,
Deprest, and overthrown, as seem’d,
Like that self-begott’n bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
And lay e’re while a Holocaust,
From out her ashie womb now teem’d
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deem’d,
And though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird ages of lives.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.”
—William James (1842–1910)