Sir, – Phil Reilly (December 16th) recounts recently seeing three cranes "of the feathered variety" while walking along the Boyne and wishes to see an increase in their numbers.
If your reader did indeed see three cranes, perhaps a letter to Birdwatch Ireland, rather than one to The Irish Times, would have been more appropriate, as we do not have cranes in Ireland.
I am quite certain that what was spotted was the common grey heron.
Wishing for an increase in our crane population is, I fear, as fanciful as our aspirations to see a reduction in the numbers of trolleys, of both the hospital and abandoned supermarket varieties. – Yours, etc,
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PAT MULLEN,
Dundalk,
Co Louth.