Pollardstown Fen, Kildare; Or somewhere I've been meaning to go for aaaaaaaages

This morning, with the weather being so nice and all, I decided to scout out a local conservation area that's been at the back of my mind for some years now (it even came up as a suggestion for a Young Scientists Competition entry, but that's another story that I've forgotten....).



Pollardstown Fen, Co. Kildare, with car parking located just at the M in Morristownbiller in the map below:


View Larger Map

It's a large area, and boggy (Well, I suppose fenny, but it's hard to write that without laughing...) and the National Parks and Wildlife Service have installed a boardwalk about 2km or so in length so that you can easily see what the fen is all about. In brief, it's an area on the outskirts of the Curragh plains, where the limestone brings a lot of underground water to the surface in numerous springs (Father Moore's well, nearby, probably being another one of these). This water in turn creates a fen, or marshland, which is first and foremost an important habitat (you remember those snails that held up the Kildare bypass?) and secondly a source of water for the Grand Canal!



It was quiet today - I was alone (there were flowers to be chosen!) and only as I left did another car or 2 come into the car park. There were also very few birds, though had I spent longer there, or in another part of the year, I may have had more to look at - though I was too slow with my camera when I spotted a kestrel hovering!

It's overwhelmingly reedy, and the area of the fen is substantially larger than covered by the walkway, but I don't know how safe or wise or environmentally friendly it would be to try to explore off the boardwalk.



In other news this weekend there was a familial meeting which went well, and a fine view of the ISS (which seemed to interest all those in the familial meeting!) and the almost-docked Discovery space shuttle. I have my 10x50 Pentax binos to thank for being able to discern the 2 points of light, and although it's "just a moving star" there's added significance when you know what you're looking at. I've added a useful tracker to the right hand side you might have noticed.

Oh, and for further information on the fen, why not have a look at the sites below:
National Parks and Wildlife service factsheet 
Bord na Mona info
Inland Waterways info

Enjoy!