Ireland's Corncrakes

[Bobbie Ireland]

One of Ireland's rarest birds is the Corncrake. Once common, it is now found in only a few places, mostly the western seaboard. With almost a mythic status, it looks for all the world like a little brown chicken (it is classed with Crakes and Rails). When it flies, it looks like a wind-up toy - and how it migrates on those tiny wings is an amazement. Here's a piece about its conservation from "The Irish Times", along with another link to pix/species info from BirdWatch Ireland.


For many Irish people the call of the corncrake meant the arrival of summer, but the bird has almost disappeared from the island. There’s a battle to prevent the decline, but it could go either way, writes GORDON DEEGAN 


AT 12.20AM on a summer night on a dirt track overlooking Blacksod Bay, on the Erris Peninsula in northwest Mayo, two men stand silently, rotating 360 degrees with their hands cupped behind their ears. The first goes clockwise, the second anticlockwise. One of the men, Tim Gordon, a contractor with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, comes to a sudden stop and quietly tells his companion, Denis Strong: “I can hear five, maybe six of them.� Welcome to the front line in the battle to save the corncrake from national extinction.

The corncrakes they can hear make up almost 5 per cent of the country’s entire population of calling males, and Gordon admits in the darkness that the future of the bird in Ireland “is on a knife edge�. Known to locals as the Corncrake Man, he is one of a small number of field workers that the State has employed this year to carrying out a census of the bird as part of a new €200,000 corncrake conservation programme...

Irish Times link:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2010/0911/1224278603689.html

Photo link:
http://www.birdwatchireland.ie/Default.aspx?tabid=311

[Donna]

What a cool name "Corncrake".

Farmers are integral to the survival of the corncrake. The department pays them not to cut their grass until the end of its nesting season. “It is working,� says Gordon. “That is what has kept us in it the last 15 years; that is why they haven’t disappeared completely.� Farmers receive €100 per acre not to cut their grass until August 1st and €150 per acre not to cut it until September 1st; they also receive €20 per acre to cut their grass from the centre of a field outwards rather than starting at the edge and working inwards

Hope this helps!

Thanks Bobbie

[MAK]

I agree Donna. I thought it was corncake at first glance!

[Bobbie Ireland]

What a cool name "Corncrake".

Farmers are integral to the survival of the corncrake. The department pays them not to cut their grass until the end of its nesting season. “It is working,� says Gordon. “That is what has kept us in it the last 15 years; that is why they haven’t disappeared completely.� Farmers receive €100 per acre not to cut their grass until August 1st and €150 per acre not to cut it until September 1st; they also receive €20 per acre to cut their grass from the centre of a field outwards rather than starting at the edge and working inwards

Hope this helps!

Thanks Bobbie

Maybe the Irish Times piece elaborates on this cutting from the inside-out... but anyway... it was discovered that by cutting from the inside, the corncrakes and their chicks would move to the outer edges of the fields and thus escape the machines. Cutting from the outside meant that they all congregated in the centre of the field. In the days when scythes were used, there was little problem. Modern machinery and earlier cuttings contributed to the corncrake's downturn.

(Sidebar: If anyone cares, I do a passable imitation of the male's crex-crex call...)

[MAK]

    Well I care Bobbie. Maybe when you come to town you can sing a few bars!   bguitar

[Bobbie Ireland]

   Well I care Bobbie. Maybe when you come to town you can sing a few bars!   bguitar

You will be pleased to hear that there are no "bars" - just a constant crex-crex... crex-crex... and on and on and on and...

[Donna]

(Sidebar: If anyone cares, I do a passable imitation of the male's crex-crex call...)

Record it and post it!!  bguitar I'm curious now!

[Donna]

http://www.entertonement.com/clips/mlhhmctfdy--Corncrake-CallAnimals-Birds-Corncrake- Jeeze it sounds like Frankenstein's experiment. Oh Bobbie, I gotta hear this one.

[MAK]

    Sounds like a cricket in his throat!   

[Bobbie Ireland]

(Sidebar: If anyone cares, I do a passable imitation of the male's crex-crex call...)

Record it and post it!!  bguitar I'm curious now!

Me? Record and post? You gotta be kidding! (I am quite good at it, tho... In fact, I am having a little practice right now!)

[Donna]

(Sidebar: If anyone cares, I do a passable imitation of the male's crex-crex call...)

Record it and post it!!  bguitar I'm curious now!

Me? Record and post? You gotta be kidding! (I am quite good at it, tho... In fact, I am having a little practice right now!)

Oh how I wish I was a fly on your wall!! 

[Bobbie Ireland]

I just realised one can also listen to birds on that RSPB site... here's the corncrake!

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/c/corncrake/index.aspx

Good site for checking the kinds of things we see over here... tho Ireland does not have the species variety that the UK does.

[Donna]

I just realised one can also listen to birds on that RSPB site... here's the corncrake!

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/c/corncrake/index.aspx

Good site for checking the kinds of things we see over here... tho Ireland does not have the species variety that the UK does.

If you can imitate that sound....God bless you Bobbie.

[Bobbie Ireland]

I just realised one can also listen to birds on that RSPB site... here's the corncrake!

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/c/corncrake/index.aspx

Good site for checking the kinds of things we see over here... tho Ireland does not have the species variety that the UK does.

If you can imitate that sound....God bless you Bobbie.

But I can! I can!!