Picture: Valerie O’Sullivan
The splendid sounds of the dawn chorus, with sweet birdsong heralding the arrival a new day, will be the focus of a live radio broadcast featuring experts talking while walking on a route from Derrycunnihy to Lord Brandon’s Cottage in Killarney National Park.
Presented by broadcaster and journalist Frank Lewis, the programme will air on Radio Kerry from just after the 9.00am news until 11.00am on Saturday, April 29 with a Saturday Supplement podcast available online from the following Tuesday.
Starting out at 5.30am, Frank will be accompanied by Dan Kelliher who was Killarney National Park superintendent from 1963 to 2001, Gearhameen ponyman and nature observer Gene Tangney, ornithologist Ed Carty and Killarney National Park regional manager Danny O’Keeffe.
They will share stories, memories and recollections of lazy beds – ridges that might have last grown potatoes during the Famine – the waterfall where Queen Victoria was “eaten by midges” and the very cold night when Doetie Donoghue’s car was stuck overnight on Galway’s Bridge.
The programme will also recall the ruined cottages where the charcoal workers lived in the heart of 1,500 acres of oak woodland and the majestic lure of the upper lake, the Black Valley, the MacGillicuddy’s Reeks and the bare dome of Purple mountain.
They will examine the impact of herds of wild goats, dozens of deer and rhododendron and try to solve the long-standing question of whether Lord Brandon’s Cottage was round tower built to detain his wife from her relationship with Lord Melbourne, the future British prime minister?
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