County Louth

County Louth is a coastal county in the north of the province of Leinster and is part of the Border Region. It is named after the village of Louth. Nicknamed the ‘Wee County’, it is the smallest of Ireland’s thirty-two counties covering just 826 km² (319 square miles) with a population of around 140,000 people. Louth County town is Dundalk, although Drogheda is the largest settlement; together they house well over half the populous.,

It borders four counties; Meath to the south, Monaghan to the west, Armagh to the north and Down to the northeast across Carlingford Lough. To the east it meets the Irish Sea. By virtue of which it has a temperate oceanic climate with cool humid summers and mild winters, strongly influenced hy Atlantic Ocean currents.

Carlingford sea lough, on the Louth side, hold the Cooley Peninsula with the Cooley Mountains. On the northern ide are extensive mudflats with Brent Geese and small islets at the mouth of the lough have breeding terns, which can be seen fishing the lough’s shallow water. Slieve Foy in the Cooley Mountains is the highest point of the county at 1,932 feet.

Dobbin’s Point, Warrenpoint – ©Eric Jones CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Louth’s rivers include the Boyne and its tributary the Mattock on its southern border, Castletown, Fane, Glyde, and Dee, with the Flurry River in the north.

Birding County Louth

The best known, and probably best birding site in the county is Dundalk Bay, a Special Area of Conservation an expanse of rich mud flats which a winter home for upwards of 60,000 waders. Golden Plover, Knot and Dunlin in particular are present in large numbers. Recently a hide has been provided through the Louth Nature Trust and others. This is located in a hived off area of the waste water treatment works. The area also holds many geese in winter and is good all year round for gulls and other seabirds.

Historically the Little Terns have nested at Baltray but they have had a series of extremely poor breeding seasons with only occasional rearing of a small number of young. Their breeding was hampered by a combination of disturbance and predation by a range of nest predators. Volunteers now help avoid disturbance and areas have been fenced off in the hope that numbers recover.

Black Guillemot have three nesting sites in County Louth, at Port Oriel, at Gyles Quay and at Greenore Port. Nesting sites are typically gaps between boulders or cavities along the shore, however, they often select harbours when cavities or crevices in the quay walls provide ideal areas. This tendency to choose man-made structures for nesting is apparently increasing.

Ravensdale Forest path – ©Eric Jones CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikipedia Commons

North of Dundalk on the border with Northern Ireland is the largest forested area in the county – Ardee Bog is the most prominent raised bog in the county and is located near Ardee and recognised as a biodiversity hotspot particularly as a critical wetland for wildlife, including Barn Owls. Other notable peatland areas include Stormanstown Bog and the Anna Bog.

Ravensdale Forest. The site is open access with mixed woodland rising steeply to the summit of Black Mountain (506m) with many kilometres of forest roads and tracks. There are three way-marked trails in the forest. It holds most of the usual woodland species including Great-spotted Woodpeckers.