Booterstown Marsh Nature Reserve

Sandwiched between the Rock Road and the Dart line Booterstown Marsh is a little piece of nature existing in the middle of Dublin city. Home to Swallows in the Summer and Brent Geese in the Winter. As I write this review a pair of Swans are raising a brood of Cygnets in the marsh — all in view of the Dart platform. It’s well kept, at least twice a year volunteers give the place a thorough clean up. I love having it there, Dublin needs more wild places like this coexisting within the urban sprawl.

This is not a long review, but I get the dart from there sometimes and it’s a scenic landmark but smells disgusting, especially with the sea smell beside it!

While I mightn’t know much about bird watching, I’ve grown up near to the marsh, and it doesn’t seem to attract the same variety of unusual birds as it did a few years ago before they scared all the birds off for a few months while constructing that useless «island». Also, the view has been ruined a bit by the ugly new bridge in the Dart station, but on the plus side, there’s a newish grassy area on the Trimleston Ave end with three benches to sit and have an aul peer.
Thank god it’s not another ugly 80s office building blocking off the view like further up the Merrion Road.

The southern shore of Dublin Bay was once fringed with salt marshes, coastal lands rich in marine and bird life. Booterstown marsh is the last remaining section of marshland left in Dublin, now a protected ecological nature reserve and bird sanctuary.
Brambles, thistles and bindweeds grow right up to the wall along the Rock Road, a natural protection against the intrusion of people or predatory animals into the marsh, though the evidence of human influence is depressingly prominent in the number of torn plastic bags, drinks cans and the odd shopping trolley that litters the area.
Watercress, wild celery and a range of grasses and reeds are the most prolific of the plantlife that thrives in the silty ponds. During the summer, wild flowers like buttercups, foxgloves and mauve sea aster can be seen.
The soft mud on the surface of the marsh is home to freshwater molluscs and worms, and the moist conditions are ideal for insects like mosquitoes and midges. The insects in turn attract the birds — mallards and moorhens are common, and you are almost guaranteed to spot at least one heron, who use the marsh for roosting. Oystercatchers and wading birds come here to feed, and in the summer, swallows and swifts come to feast on the flying insects.
The best place to view the birds is from the main road, or get up even closer by peeking over the low wall on the Booterstown DART Station northbound platform.

What I don’t understand about this place is the fact that it apparently makes sense to have a nature reserve (a teeny tiny one I might add) squished between a fairly busy main road and the DART tracks. OK, Tweety and all his mates have a lovely view of the sea, but what good is that when they’re choking on petrol fumes? Not to mention quenching their thirst in a disgustingly polluted streamy thing that barely merits the name. I reckon the County Council must secretly have it in for them…

I personally know nothing about bird watching. But apparently, along with Bull Island, this is one of the most important nature reserves in Dublin. You can see all the little birdies in their natural first choice home-​the shopping trolley.