As the late harvesting of meadows which shelter the remaining corncrakes in Ireland was completed this week, it has emerged that the number of the endangered birds has dropped to between 145 and 150.
Last year the calls of 155 males were recorded on the wet meadowlands along the Shannon, in west Mayo and in Co Donegal, where they breed during the summer.
A conservation project, funded by Duchas, the Heritage Service, and by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and co-ordinated by BirdWatch Ireland, compensates farmers for farming in a corncrake-sensitive way.
This means not cutting meadows until the young birds are strong enough to escape the harvesters, and not mowing meadows from the outside in, but the reverse, which drives the young birds out of fields producing hay or silage.
According to Mr Alex Copeland, the BirdWatch Ireland Corncrake Project Officer, the drop in numbers masks the fact that it now appears the corncrake population in Ireland is stable.
"Between 1988 and 1993, the Irish corncrake population declined by over 80 per cent. With the help of this project over the following five years, the rate of decline dropped to just 7 per cent," he said.
"The numbers in the Shannon callows dropped slightly to 59 from last year's total of 65, but that figure is still higher than 54 recorded in 1996 and 1997," Mr Copeland said. There was also a small decline in the number recorded in Mayo, but there had been an increase in west Donegal because of good breeding performances on the offshore islands, which now hold almost one-third of the national population.
He said that this year there had been encouraging unconfirmed reports of the distinctive call of the corncrake from parts of the country where the bird has not been heard for over 30 years. A calling bird had been heard in Co Fermanagh, which had a small population of corncrakes until the middle of the last decade.
"I am content that the numbers have now stabilised and I am looking forward to an increase in the number of birds coming here to breed next year," Mr Copeland added.