In summer large numbers of swallows, house martins and swifts fly up from their nests in the nearby villages to feed over the ponds. In winter, snipe and green sandpipers, both wading birds, search for invertebrates in the mud. In Clares time the snipe was also a common breeding species. He wrote:

Lover of swamps

The quagmire overgrown

With hassock tufts of sedge where fear encamps

Around thy home alone

Emperor dragonfly

Beautiful chinamark