Explore every episode of the podcast Mooney Goes Wild

Derek kicks off tonight’s programme with a challenge for Niall: can he identify a mystery bird sound from a video that Derek shot with his phone.

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Terry Flanagan meets June Woodward in Co Clare to see her successful Barn Owl nestbox and its remarkable occupants.

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Dave Suddaby explains how BirdWatch Ireland has helped Lapwings recover at Annagh Marsh on the Mullet Peninsula.

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Catherine Ó Flathartaigh shares her remarkable footage of a rare white Swallow with Niall, who explains leucism and albinism.

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Thom Breathnach tells us about SANCCOB in Cape Town, and their efforts to save the Critically Endangered African Penguin.

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Niall Hatch answers listeners’ questions about elusive summer Robins and why insects survive crashing into windows.

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Terry Flanagan learns night photography from Anthony Lynch at Dunsink Observatory.

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Niall Hatch reports on BirdLife’s State of the World’s Birds and the Nairobi Flyways Declaration.

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Rory Cobbe meets Róisín FitzGerald, John Leahy & Aileen Tennant at Fota to learn more about their new Sumatran Tiger cubs.

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Prof Philip McGinnity discusses the impact of farmed Atlantic Salmon interbreeding with wild Irish salmon.

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Terry Flanagan visits Declan Murphy in Newcastle, Co Wicklow, to discover why 2026 has been a good year for Irish butterflies.

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Ken Whelan explores Arctic Char, Grayling, invasive Pink Salmon and King Crab in northern Norway and Finland.

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For three decades, Mooney Goes Wild reporter Terry Flanagan has been roaming the highways and byways of Ireland in search of answers to your wildlife queries. He's been up every tree, down every ditch and through every hedge in pursuit of a good story - if there's a mystery in the natural world, Terry is usually the man to solve it... he is, after all, the Sherlock Holmes of RTÉ wildlife reporting!

Over the years he has investigated countless countryside curiosities that have left listeners scratching their heads! Tonight we're dipping into the archives to revisit some classic Terry reports - including the mystery of communal rook roosting in Portlaoise, meeting the Swans of Lough Ennell and pausing to savour the orchids of Mount Merrion...

For more information, visit https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/mooney/2026/0905/1590440-mgw-special-terrys-reports-monday-07-09-26/.

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The secretive, almost supernatural, reputation of the Snow Leopard, which lives high in the mountain ranges of Central and Southern Asia, has led to the species being dubbed The Ghost of the Mountains - which just so happens to be the title of a new book about these remarkable big cats by Dr. Kulbhushansingh (Kullu) Suryawanshi. He joins us on the line to tell us more about these mysterious animals and the harsh, hostile environments they are perfectly adapted to.

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On tonight's show:

🪶Why Woodpigeons are still nest‑building in late August

🐦A listener’s mystery pigeon with extravagant feathered feet

❄️We learn about Snow Leopards with Dr Kullu Suryawanshi — author of The Ghost of the Mountains

For more information on tonight's show, visit https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/mooney/2026/0830/1589743-mooney-goes-wild-monday-august-31st-2026/

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From Dastardly & Muttley's "Stop The Pigeon" to "Pigeon Street", there's one bird that's the focus of our first item on tonight's show! Derek recently spotted a Woodpigeon carrying a stick in its beak, something that is a common sight in the spring when nest-building is in full swing... but why in August? And we learn why some fancy pigeons have frilly, feathered legs!

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Next week’s programme, which will be broadcast on Monday September 7th, will be a special compilation of some of the very best reports by our intrepid roving reporter, Terry Flanagan.

To whet your appetite, we close tonight’s programme with one of Terry’s reports, first broadcast in 2019, from the Wild Ireland nature sanctuary in Co. Donegal, home to a wide array of creatures which once roamed wild in Ireland but which, sadly, have been lost to us, including Wolves, Brown Bears, Lynx and Wild Boars.

There, Terry spoke with the park’s founder, Killian McLaughlin, about the inspiration behind this very ambitious project, his aims as a conservationist and the history of the Wolf in Ireland.

For more information about Wild Ireland, visit https://wildireland.org/.

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Did you know that rainforests are not confined to the tropical regions of the world and can even be found in Ireland? To find out more, you will definitely want to tune into the forthcoming RTÉ television programme An Irish Atlantic Rainforest. This two-part series tells the story of how Eoghan Daltun, a sculptor and leading climate activist, resurrected his very own rainforest on the Beara Peninsula.

In 2009, Eoghan purchased a small cottage close to the village of Eyeries in Co. Cork. It came with a plot of tree-covered land, untouched for roughly a century, which he recognised as being genuine rainforest, i.e., a woodland filled with an abundance of plants – such as mosses and epiphytes – which obtain their moisture from the water carried naturally in the air.

Having come to this realisation, Eoghan did two simple things: he erected a fence to exclude grazing animals, then he removed the invasive non-native flora – particularly Rhododendron – which had begun to dominate the woodland. The rest he left to nature, without any planting or further active management. Within a short time, a rainforest teeming with life had been restored, bringing back the Ireland of many centuries ago.

From his inner-city Dublin upbringing to his life as a stone conservationist, Eoghan is a striking and inspirational figure who now finds himself custodian of one of the finest examples of temperate rainforest in Ireland. He joins us on tonight’s programme to tell us more about his efforts to bring back an Irish rainforest, the importance of this habitat for our native wildlife and what to expect from the forthcoming RTÉ television programme.

An Irish Atlantic Rainforest airs on RTÉ One television at 18:30 on Sunday 23rd August and Sunday 30th August.

For more information about Eoghan Daltun and his efforts to restore a natural Irish rainforest, visit https://www.rte.ie/news/munster/2022/0917/1323409-rainforest-restore-cork/.

Eoghan's book An Irish Atlantic Rainforest was published by Hachette UK in 2024. The ISBN is 9781399705295 and the RRP is £12.99 (approx. €15). For more information, visit https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/eoghan-daltun/an-irish-atlantic-rainforest/9781399705295/.

To follow Eoghan on Instagram, visit https://www.instagram.com/irishrainforest/.

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/mooney/2026/0816/1588136-mooney-goes-wild-monday-august-17th-2026/

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Regular Mooney Goes Wild listener Nikola Brady got in touch with us with a query. She regularly walks her dog along a country route close to her house in Kilcock, Co. Kildare and recently noticed a problem with the Horse Chestnut trees lining those back roads. The leaves of many of the trees that they pass seem to have shrivelled up, and Nikola was concerned that they might be dying. She sent in some photos and asked whether we could identify the problem and suggest what might be done to help the trees.

Suitably intrigued, we dispatched our roving reporter Terry Flanagan to Co. Kildare to meet up with Nikola and to have a look at the trees. As he tells us in his report for tonight’s programme, the culprits are the caterpillars of a moth called the Horse-chestnut Leaf Miner – just the size of a grain of rice and only discovered to science as recently as 1984 – which burrow into the leaves and eat them from within, causing the damage.

This arboreal affliction first reared its head in Ireland in 2013 and appears to be spreading across the country. Happily, although the damage caused by the caterpillar looks severe, it does not result in the deaths of the infected trees, generally coming too late in the growing season to prove fatal.

For more information about the Horse-chestnut Leaf Miner moth, visit https://www.mothsireland.com/horse-chestnut-leaf-miner-cameraria-ohridella-present-in-ireland/.

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Roger Casement (1864–1916) is best remembered as one of Ireland's most significant historical figures, but before his execution for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising, he earned an international reputation as a humanitarian and diplomat. Serving as a British consul in Africa and South America, Casement exposed the brutal exploitation and abuse of indigenous peoples in the Congo Free State and the Peruvian Amazon. His reports helped bring global attention to these atrocities and established him as one of the leading human rights campaigners of his time.

What is less well-known to the general public is that Casement also had a lifelong fascination with the natural world. During his extensive travels, he took every opportunity to observe and collect plants and animals, carefully documenting the wildlife he encountered in some of the world's most remote regions.

In celebration of this aspect of Roger Casement’s life, and to commemorate the 110th anniversary of his execution, on Bank Holiday Monday 3rd August, as part of our Nature on One series, we broadcast a special documentary, presented by Eric Dempsey, about Casement’s life as a naturalist. In case you missed it, we will be repeating this programme next Monday, August 24th , in our regular Mooney Goes Wild slot at 22:00 on RTÉ Radio One.

For further information about Eric Dempsey’s Nature on One documentary on Roger Casement, visit https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/mooney/2026/0724/1584965-nature-on-one-casement-03-08-26/.

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