Read about our BIRDING PLUS tours concept.

Our goal on our Birding Plus Ireland tours is to show you Ireland as the Irish know it--to meet the people, take in the culture, visit unique pubs, listen to outstanding traditional Irish music, while at the same time watch Ireland's birds as we travel the Emerald Isle. We have arranged some surprises and amazing traditional Irish music venues in all types of pubs and session houses, including the now-declining country pubs, which are becoming rare. Daily routines--birding reserves, refuges, and coastal bays and estuaries, visiting an array of historical sites--will be relaxed and flexible, as we provide opportunities to see birds well (especially from hides), indulge your own particular cultural interests, and take advantage of the expertise of your guides. Our evenings engaging in pub culture will be carefully arranged and often magical.

While Ireland is not a birding hotspot, the sheer number of birds you see is impressive, particularly shorebirds (Common Redshanks, Northern Lapwings, Common Greenshanks, and Eurasian Golden-Plovers), gulls (Black-headed and Mew), waterfowl (Tufted Ducks, Common Pochards, "Eurasian" Teal, and Eurasian Wigeon), and corvids (Rooks, Common Ravens, Eurasian Jackdaws, and Hooded Crows). And by late fall many of the tourists have departed and the many migrant birds that winter in Ireland have returned, including Whooper Swan from Iceland, Bewick's Swan from Russia, and Greater White-fronted and Pink-fronted geese from Greenland.

The tour begins in Dublin, then heads north to Newgrange (a cultural site older than the pyramids of Egypt), Armagh City (in Northern Ireland and the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland), Keady (a major focal point of Irish music and also an Irish bird museum), Lough Neagh (a major wintering area for such birds as Whooper Swan and pochards), Belfast (with a dark history, it is now a progressive city), and the picturesque eastern coastline including the Mountains of Mourne for their breathtaking beauty and Clogher Head for its coastal birds. On the second half of the tour, we'll travel south along the Wicklow coast and the Wicklow Mountains to the Wexford Slobs, one of the best wintering areas for Greenland Greater White-fronted Goose, Common Shelduck, and other species in southern Ireland.

Note: For a visit to Ireland at a different season, we also have a springtime Birding Plus -- Ireland tour on our schedule (see it here).

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