Sílbhe Uí Mórdha (S Moore)

An excellent point that gets little media attention compared to calls for dredging/flood barriers. Rainwater is barrelling down overgrazed, eroded, uplands into rivers whose natural floodplains have been built over. Biodiversity crisis meets climate crisis thejournal.ie/readme/storm-c…

@Tree_Folklore And the makings of 2 nurturing drinks, one from the cleavers and one from the nettles. 🌱🌱

She's watching

@tea_vault @darthur @mindsetmachine youtu.be/YROlODQpOqw?si…

@darthur @mindsetmachine yeah. exactly. where's the ending to his tale?

Psychology of people who cut everyone off - Carl Jung

Today is the anniversary of Oíche na Gaoithe Móire - the Night of the Big Wind, 1839, the worst natural disaster in Irish history. Did the terror and the psychological damage of the night feed into the language-shift in Ireland? Grateful for retweets!👍 irishlanguagematters.com/oiche-na-gaoit…

Across Britain it was once believed that witches could slip out of their human form & transform into creatures such as the hare 🐰🪄 In Ireland, however, especially in the south-west, a more gentle belief prevailed. It was said that when elderly women passed away, their spirits were set free and reborn as a hare exploring the meadows and hedgerows of the country 🐇🌾 Because of this, a deep cultural taboo grew around killing and eating hares. To do so risked the awful thought that a family might, unknowingly, be sitting down to dinner with their recently departed grandmother in their dish 🍲🐰 🎨 Nigel Artingstall

Absolutely heartbreaking...

Ardnacrusha hydroelectric station yesterday evening, when ESB was abstracting almost 70% of the flow in the Lower River Shannon Special Area of Conservation (SAC). Water is diverted at Parteen Regulating Weir, and this abstraction affects over 15kms of internationally designated Natura 2000 river. ❌This is not “clean energy” and it is not “powering Ireland”, despite ESB’s claims. As seen in the video, much of the water taken from the SAC is simply being dumped through the spillway rather than used for hydroelectric generation. ⚠️This is a critical period for fish migration. Upstream migrating Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and River Lampreys (Lampetra fluviatilis) are following this diverted water into the tailrace, where they become trapped and are unlikely ever to spawn. Both species are Qualifying Interests of the SAC. ⚠️Downstream migrating critically endangered eels also follow the water into the unscreened turbines. Eels are also likely to get harmed if they pass though this 30m high spillway. They will also be exposed to 'gas supersaturation' in the tailrace and injured and disorientated fish are very vulnerable to predation. ⚠️The white screen on the station visible in the video is related to an ongoing multi-million-euro refurbishment, carried out entirely outside the planning system with no environmental assessment. Water management decisions are being made day-to-day and have varied significantly in recent years. ⚠️The water management ‘plan’ for this station is new, the refurbishment ‘project’ is ongoing, and both are having significant effects on the environment and the Lower River Shannon SAC. These impacts are cumulative with the impacts of the 1920s scheme and required Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Appropriate Assessment (AA). ⚠️Salmon runs on the River Shannon have collapsed, and the entire SAC is being damaged by the unsustainable management of this hydroelectric scheme. The refurbishment was a major opportunity to implement mitigation measures to protect endangered fish, yet nothing was done. However, the key ecological problem on the Lower River Shannon is the over-abstraction of water. No fish pass could ever work with the situation shown in this video for example. ❌The current management of this hydroelectric scheme is incompatible with the legal requirements of the EU Habitats Directive and the Water Framework Directive. ✅What is needed is a formal SAC management plan for this Natura 2000 river, one that balances electricity generation with biodiversity, fisheries, flood risk management, and the needs of local communities.

Yesterday nearly broke me but over 10,000 dogs will be operated on now because of the Marathon. Probably a lot more once we plan it all out. That was the hardest day of my life but I just can’t believe what people are like. Can’t walk but also speechless ❤️

@NiallHarbison Congratulations from L-R Felix, Oscar & Kasia. 🇮🇪 🐾🐾🐾 Kasia the GSD & Felix arrived Oct 3rd, 2 years apart - they’ve the best big brother ever Oscar (aka BurrenBernese). He’s welcomed them into his home, shares food, toys, beds, cuddles and his humans #happydoggos

Requiem for the Christmas Island Shrew It never weighed more than a spoonful of sugar. Five or six grams of life, soft-furred and sharp-nosed, darting among the roots and leaf litter of a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. At night, its voice—a thin, high cry, part bat and part whisper—once filled the forest of Christmas Island. Now the forest is silent. Australia’s only shrew, Crocidura trichura, has been declared extinct. Few knew it lived, fewer still that it was Australian. The shrew was a stranger in a land of marsupials, a migrant that arrived tens of thousands of years ago, likely clinging to a raft of vegetation from what is now Indonesia. For millennia, it thrived unseen in the island’s rainforest, feeding on beetles and sheltering beneath roots. When British naturalists arrived in the 1890s, they found the forest alive with its shrill chatter. “Extremely common,” they wrote. Within a generation, it was gone. The black rats came first, stowaways in bales of hay. With them came a parasite, Trypanosoma lewisi, that swept through the island’s naïve mammals like a plague. Within years, both native rats were extinct, and by 1908, the shrew too was presumed lost. Its name lingered only in museum drawers and footnotes. Yet it was not quite gone. In 1958, two shrews surfaced as bulldozers cleared forest for mining, seen briefly before being forgotten. Then, in 1984, came a small miracle: a live female, discovered in a clump of fern. For a year she lived in a terrarium, tended by biologists who fed her grasshoppers and hope. Months later, a male was caught—sickly, short-tempered, and dead within weeks. The female lingered alone until she, too, was gone. No others were ever found. Searches in the decades that followed brought only silence—the kind that deepens until it becomes its own proof. In 2025, the Red List made official what many already knew in their hearts: Crocidura trichura was no more. To some, the loss of a creature so small may seem inconsequential. Yet its passing adds one more tally to Australia’s unenviable record—the thirty-ninth mammal species lost since colonization. The shrew’s story is a familiar one: an island undone by rats, cats, ants, and the heedless movement of the world. It asked for little: a patch of soil, a few beetles, a quiet forest. And it leaves behind a silence that, once heard, cannot be forgotten. 💐 Full piece: lnkd.in/gwszmzcf

@jamesmdurney years later my great grandfathers letters of application for compensation were auctioned by @Whytesdublin we’ve never been able to track them down or how these letters ended up at auction in the first place.

@jamesmdurney My grandfather’s brother Patrick Allison died in this ambush, my great grand parents never received the compensation promised for his murder. Great Granny walked from Harristown to Carlow for the inquest.

I've never seen anything like the sense of loss for our very much loved Manchán Magan - thousands of posts on social media. He awakened swathes of the Irish people & lit a path to discovering our language, land, heritage & a deeper meaning to life. Suaimhneas síoraí ar Manchán.

So sad to hear about Manchán Magan going to his heaven he was such a fantabulous human being to the very end. Who else would have Thirty Two Words for Field or Ninety Nine Words for Rain and make a loaf of bread and a pat of butter in a performance. Coladh Sámh. RIP Manchán

A forgotten atrocity of the War of Independence “The Sack of Balbriggan” happened on the 20th of September 1920, when those familiar terrorizers of civilians, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), doled out the usual taste of British “justice” to disloyal Irish subjects. The chief constable of the RIC Peter Burke and his brother sergeant Michael Burke were having a few jars in Smyth's pub Balbriggan.Their little session was rudely interrupted by local IRA operatives Michael Rock and John Denham. The two paramilitaries shot both RIC men, wounding Michael but killing the chief constable Peter. This assassination precipitated that time honoured tool of British colonialism: revenge via collective punishment. In a massively disproportionate and dishonourable response, 3 troop carriers full of Auxiliaries and dreaded Black and Tans stormed into the little town. Nearby Gormanston barracks were also furious at their RIC colleagues being attacked, so they sent another 200 soldiers to join the sacking of the town. The barbarians practically razed Balbriggan it to the ground. They burned pubs and factories and even homes to ashes. Dozens more gaffs were riddled with bullets and torn through by rabid auxillaries and Tans as scores of terrified innocent families were dragged from their beds and battered out in to the street. The smell of burning, the sound of screams and gunshots in the air. The horror children must've experienced, the helplessness husbands and wives mustved felt, knowing the trigger happy terrifiying black and tans might put a bullet in a loved ones head, or worse. After the violence and trauma caused by these “peacekeepers” two local IRA volunteers called John Gibbons and James Lawless were arrested and dragged to the RIC barracks in Balbriggan. It will not surprise you that they were brutally beaten to near death before being bayoneted and shot. Their bodies were left on display for locals to see. The good people of Balbriggan and millions more Irish subjects of the crown were reminded that there truly was no chaos like British order, no terror like British peacekeeping.

Thinking of my dad who only turned 17 the month before this #seige 13th September 1961. Only weeks in the army and was sent to the Congo. Cosaint Chalma (Valiant Defence) and Misneach (Courage)

#OnThisDay 1649 Oliver Cromwell set sail for Ireland at the head of 35 ships from Milford Haven.... ...And to say the least, he was a bad egg. #Ireland #History

2025 Tailteann Cup Champions ⚪️⚫️⚪️⚫️

@AjohnBuckley Hopefully you get to visit Ireland soon! 💚☘️

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#NoMowMay is over, but why not keep going with #LetItBloomJune & #HelpThemFlyJuly? Reducing mowing throughout the summer is one of the best things you can do for pollinators Mow less and help local, native wildflowers grow naturally.