Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhaoibh! (Happy St Patrick’s Day everyone!).

It’s a wee bit of an occasion for me today – my 40th contribution to The Guardian‘s Country Diary was published this morning. So in all the celebrations today, I’m glad to add that one into the mix.

The piece is about black-headed gulls, which like all birds that have defined and predictable breeding seasons, are currently undergoing massive change.

One of the many things I love about birds is how similar they are to us in some ways, and then, how mind-glowingly different.

And just to add in another little celebration. Yesterday I was at Tyrella Beach for my final monthly survey of wetland birds for the BTO. This regular winter season survey by folks all over the UK & Ireland (the Republic’s sister organisation, Birdwatch Ireland, does theirs in parallel). I haven’t been brilliant this year – I missed 3 months (between holidays, illness and bad weather) but I did cover four. February’s was a desperate day, with appalling weather but yesterday was glorious. After I finished the survey part (designed to be within two hours either side of high tide – while I may not meet them, it’s always nice to think of the thousands of other volunteers who are doing this work at a similar time all over these islands), I just sat down on rock with my scope. It was such a different day. I saw no sanderlings or dunlins, which are so prevalent the winter months. They must be gone north to breed. However, there were a few Brent geese still around. But because I was anticipating today’s diary, I found myself paying far more attention to all the gulls. The different plumages that mark their species, age and stage. As the afternoon drifted on, I had the greatest compliment a wild creature can give you. Most of them relaxed enough under my gaze to doze.