Ireland

And Beaking News from The Backyard Birds

Sometimes you wake up and decide you just have to go to Ireland. That’s where I found myself in March, in a “Need to Go To Ireland” state of mind. I traveled with my good friend, Deirdre, who I have known since UVA days. We had the good fortune of spending a portion of that time with her good friend Emma who happens to live part of the year in Malahide, County Dublin, Ireland. The whole trip is too much for one post here, so I’ll start at the beginning.

But first, I’ll share the BEAKING NEWS (get it? birds have beaks?) from the Backyard Birds. We are having a mini-eruption of the Lazuli Buntings in the Tubac backyard, one of my favorite birds to ever bird. Sometimes I have ten of them in the backyard at a time. I spend the day picking up my binoculars and watching the Lazuli Buntings. Stressful work stuff? Take a Lazuli break. Washed the dishes? Time for a Lazuli break.

They are just stopping by on the trip to their summering grounds, wherever that happens to be, but it’s always nice to have the Lazulis in the hood. My only wish for you is that I was a better photographer, but we can’t have everything in life. Sorry, folks. You get the photos you get, not the photos you deserve.

Male Lazuli Buntings and some Femals that are Mostly Brown

Where was I? Oh yes…Ireland Recap Part 1. I promise I’ll try not to make this like one of those boring slide shows where you sit for hours and watch as someone clicks through 1,000 slides of a trip you didn’t go on or care much about.

We landed in Dublin and stayed at Emma’s perfect apartment in downtown Malahide. It’s the lovely kind of town where you can walk down the road and see people and even dogs you know. We aren’t even from there, and on day 2 Deirdre was saying hi to Emma’s brother, niece, and Floyd the dog on the street. I got to walk Floyd as we all went for coffee. We also met Ted the Dog out walking with his human and ended up seeing them 3 more times before we left Ireland. Malahide is also where parts of Bad Sisters was filmed, the Irish murder mystery series. The pub, Gibneys, was also featured in that show.

We had a coffee shop, a bar, a bookstore, and a castle, everything you need in a perfect town. We were practically locals for a few days, at least in our minds. Malahide Castle was fun to tour, and the grounds around the castle were lovely. They had a greenhouse/conservatory and a butterfly building, and now I want a conservatory and a butterfly hatchery. Tons of locals use the grounds for their regular walks, including Ted the Dog.

Emma’s brother, Eamon McGrattan, runs a tour company, Fish and Trips, to this really beautiful off-grid, private island in the Irish Sea called Lambay. You hop aboard the Naomi Leigh and head a few miles off the coast of Ireland. Lucky for us, the seas were calm enough that we were one of the first tours with Eamon for the season. He loves that island. You can tell. He is also a really great tour guide and knows so much information about the history of the place…and he’s funny, he doesn’t suffer Trump or Elon Musk as evidenced by the fun signs on his boat, and he grills a good breakfast sausage served on a roll with spicy mustard for the trip out to the island. His son is super nice too. What’s not to enjoy?

Eamon McGrattan

Lambay Island is the home of the Revelstoke branch of the Baring family, and daily management lies in the hands of Alex Baring (7th Baron Revelstoke) who we waved to as our boats passed each other to and from Lambay. That might have been my first baron wave in life since I don’t often find myself in the sphere of barons where I also wave to them from a boat.

Lambay has lots of sheep, and we got to meet the shepherd who spoke in an accent that I couldn’t understand one word of. We also met the relief shepherd who was coming in to cover lambing season while the regular shepherd went on holiday.

In an interesting twist, Lambay is also home to a large, wild population of wallabies…you know, the kangaroo-like marsupial from Australia and Papua New Guinea. It’s a long story as to how they got there, and you can go there and see them for yourself. There are thousands of them just hopping around the wild side of the island, living their best marsupial life.

This is about as close as we could get to the wallabies.

We walked to the top if the island and enjoyed the views. We also went into the courtyard area to see the Revelstoke home. You can see Emma and Eamon standing in the front yard of the home among all this greenery in the bottom center photo. Among all the blooming daffodils, there were also tons of wild onions growing, and the whole place smelled sweet and pungent like wild onion. It was really lovely.

Special thanks to Emma for being such a great host and tour guide in Ireland, to Eamon for sharing Lambay Island with us, and to Bobby for letting me walk Floyd to coffee. This is getting long enough already, so I’ll wrap up part 1 of Ireland. If you go to the east coast of Ireland, you really need to see if you can book a tour to Lambay. It’s a beautiful place and a really interesting trip. I would also tell you to book at stay at Emma’s apartment, but sadly for most, that’s a friends and family only situation.

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