School: Áth na Coille

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1. Bird-Lore

   

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   The commonest birds seen in the school locality are sparrows, larks, finches, robins, wrens, thrushes and blackbirds. There are two kinds of sparrows hedge sparrows and house sparrows. The hedge sparrow is a small brown bird with short beak. It builds it's nest in a thick thorny hedge and the nest is made of hair and fog. It lays four or five eggs of a blue colour with black spots on them. These eggs are fairly small. The house sparrow is brown also and it lays about the same number of eggs as the hedge sparrow but it builds it's nest in houses such as barns or byres and it also builds in eaves of houses and in old walls. It's nest is made of hair and fog also. Larks are of a whitish grey colour with fairly long legs. There are two kinds of these birds also, sky larks and bog larks. Sky larks build their nests in hay fields in a hole in the ground and there is generally a small portion of hay in the nest. These birds lay five or six eggs and these eggs are of a dark brown colour speckled with black spots and are about the size of robins' eggs. The bog lark builds in the bog especially in turf and it lays the same number of eggs as the sky lark. Larks are great songsters.
   There are three kinds of finches, gold finches,

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Topics

   1. agents (~1)
      1. animal-lore (~1,185)
         1. bird-lore (~2,478)

   Language

   English

   Informant

   Thomas Mc Quillan

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Coraghy, Co. Monaghan