What are a few corncrakes' nests compared to new houses for young people with families or a house for two old folks? The question arises from reading a few paragraphs in Wings, the quarterly journal of BirdWatch Ireland, noting that an application for 54 houses at Big Meadow, Athlone, where the corncrake still breeds, has been lodged with Athlone Urban District Council. BirdWatch Ireland is convinced that most of these houses will be inside the Shannon Callows area in a field used by six singing corncrakes. That's a good proportion of this rare species. As they put it "one of the highest densities of corncrakes in the Callows." There will be argument that housing for people must come before consideration for birds. But, it can be argued, that while people can move house or district, birds scared off their normal haunts, especially migrants, who come thousands of miles to land unerringly on their nesting site of the previous year, may not breed if their usual haunt has vanished under concrete and building blocks. Then we think of the astronomer Hubert Reeves, used to studying not just the earth but the heavenly bodies as a whole, who marvels at the birds who, guided by the sun by day, by the stars at night, can year after year travel half way across our globe to do what we have just said - land on their nest site unerringly. What charting, what calculation; he is lost in admiration and yet we merely think, be they swallows or swifts or geese or whatever - "Oh, they're back again." One hopes that Athlone Urban District Council, well used to foreigners sailing up and down their River, may find a solution. Several objections, according to BirdWatch Ireland have been lodged by responsible bodies. Maybe Duchas can do a lot to help solve the matter.,
The same issue of Wings has a handsome tribute to Major Robert Francis Ruttledge, the most famous bird man of all. He was born nearly 100 years ago - in September 1899, and his great work in this field is well documented. The magazine prints a few items from his diaries. When he was 16, in May 1916, at his home, Bloomfield, Mayo: "I had a great contest with a cuckoo from 8.05 to 8.35 pm. I attracted him from Cashel to the trees between Black Lawn and Merick's garden and he flew about in the trees and once came onto the wall under which I was hiding . . . The more I imitated him, the more angry he grew . . . he hissed a lot and uttered cackles like a magpie. Then he would utter in rage cuk-cuk cuk, cuckoo, cuckoo. I left him sitting in a beech tree blind with rage . . . When I made a bad imitation he seemed more angry than ever." Y