The European Stonechat (Saxicola rubicola), photographed on Our Lady's Island in County Wexford.
Most people just love smart phone apps that can do wonderful things and a new app just released can identify the calls of 220 birds that inhabit these islands.
‘Warblr’ was developed by two scientists, Florence Wilkinson and Dan Stowell, from the Queen Mary University of London.
The app costs about €5 and works in a similar way to Shazam, the music app that uses a huge database of tracks to identify songs.
If you hear a bird whistling in your garden, just record it with your smartphone and then the app identifies the bird in question.
The makers could be on to a money-spinning wheeze because, in Britain alone, over five million people go bird watching each year. Then there are millions more who simply like walking in the countryside and they might also be tempted to purchase ‘Warblr’.