Darling birds of May
The swallows have landed for summer – but endangered corncrakes can still only be spotted in the Donegal skies
TODAY officially marks the first day of summer – but seasonal changes in the natural world around us are already well under way.
And we are in ‘exactly the peak period’ for bird migration, according to Niall Hatch of BirdWatch Ireland. Swallows and cuckoos have been sighted here already, and the swift will arrive over the coming weeks.
Some lesser-known birds to
‘There’s maybe 150 pairs left, that’s all’
look out for include several species of warbler.
Mr Hatch told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘One of them that comes to us each year is a lovely bird called the blackcap.
‘They’re migrants that come up to us from the Mediterranean region. And they’re one of the prettiest birds in terms of their song in the dawn chorus – it’s sometimes called the Irish nightingale. Two of our most common warblers are arriving to Ireland as I speak; one is called the willow warbler, and the other is the chiffchaff.
‘They look almost identical and are very difficult to tell apart visually. They’re both sort of browny-green little birds, with a stripe above their
eyes, small little beaks and they flit around the trees. But, luckily, their songs couldn’t be more different. The willow warbler has this lovely sort of whistled, gentle, sort of descending series of notes, while the chiffchaff says its name – it goes chiffchaff-chiff.’
Another visitor arriving at around this time of year is the endangered corncrake, although drastic changes to agricultural practices over recent decades have decimated the bird’s numbers.
Mr Hatch explained: ‘Where you have hay meadows that are cut in the summer, the bird does very well. But where you have just a monoculture of grass for silage production for cattle, and it’s cut early in the season, there’s no food, there’s no cover there for the corncrakes. So they’ve been pushed more and more to marginal farmland.’
The once common bird – recognisable by its distinctive, single-note, buzzing call – is now confined almost exclusively to western Connacht and Co. Donegal.
‘To give you an indication of how much the numbers have gone back, in 1950 there was a nationwide survey that found 50,000 pairs of corncrake in Ireland at the time,’ said Mr Hatch. ‘Today there’s maybe 130 to 150 pairs left, that’s all.’