Having done the bottom left hand corner of Ireland we set off yesterday for the bottom right hand corner, passing through Waterford (where the famous crystal factory has sadly gone out of business) to Wells House in Wexford.

We visited for their “hawk walk”, an hour long hands on falconry class.

Paula and I both got to have the birds (Harris Hawks native to the Americas) land our our wrists multiple times, and learned about their training.

However, it turns out that when you are out hawking, the birds spend most of their time up in the trees looking for prey.

The falconer’s job is to flush the game out of the undergrowth so the hawks can capture it. The hawks come back the the glove for food treats, in our case, yummy pigeon chunks. We did not actually kill anything, though a couple of squirrels had to run for their lives. Once a squirrel is in a tree it is pretty much safe from a hawk, as it can use the branches for cover, and stay on the far side of the tree. However, once they had seen the squirrels they hawks did not want to come back until they were bribed with a whole pigeon wing.

This is called “mantling”. The bird tries to cover up the fact that it is eating something, to prevent it being stolen by another predator.

The feeding of the birds has to be very precise. Too much and they aren’t hungry enough to hunt, too little and they will just follow the falconer on foot waiting to be fed. The birds have to be exercised every single day without fail. There are no days off if you keep hawks.

After the falconry we took a walk around the gardens and  a house tour.

The woods have a number of fairy doors and carved tree stumps.

The house was 17th century, but redone in the gothic style about 1840 and not changed much since then. Sorry, they don’t allow photos inside. Here’s the outside again.

Afterwards we headed for the Wexford Wildfowl Sanctuary. There was not much to see from the bird hides, just a few ducks, gulls, and moorhens, but the pond by the entrance had three species of geese I had not photographed in the wild before.

The Barnacle Goose.

The Snow Goose.

I know we think of snow geese being white, but some of then are black with white heads. I know they are only doing it to be difficult, they are geese after all.

The Greater White Fronted Goose.

This is the bird this reserve was set up for. These guys commute from Greenland in the summer to Ireland and Scotland in the winter. They really must love bad weather. These are the first arrivals, another few thousand will be here in another month or so.

On the way back we stopped in Waterford for dinner. They have some great murals on the buildings along O’Connell Street. I didn’t take many pictures because it was getting dark, but this one came out OK.

We had an excellent meal in a local restaurant…

… and were hoping to catch some live music, but the bands don’t start playing till 9:30 (Past our bedtime, says Paula.)(And a long drive home in the dark on unfamiliar roads on the wrong, I mean, opposite side of the highway.) (But we plan to hear *some* live music, maybe tonight of fer sure by tomorrow.)However, we did go to check out one of the pubs, and stood outside while a local woman harangued us for about twenty minutes about history and politics, so I think we can check off the Irish pub experience.