Shannon floods cause sharp decline in corncrake numbers

THE CORNCRAKE population in the midlands has been all but wiped out as a result of several successive years of Shannon flooding, a national seminar on biodiversity has been told.

For generations of Irish people, the distinctive clicking sound of the male calling bird heralded the arrival of summer, but their numbers have declined dramatically.

Earlier this year just two male calling birds were left in the Shannon Callows despite a conservation programme. “The farmers are doing their best, but they have been hampered by summer flooding,” said Brian Caffrey from Birdwatch Ireland.

“Because of the changing climate, the Shannon has flooded pretty much every year for the past six or seven years. The birds are migrating in. The nests are in the ground and the eggs are getting washed away. We may need to have a reintroduction programme if they do die out.”

Until the 1970s there was corncrakes in every county in Ireland. Traditional hay meadows, where they nest, were not usually cut until August or September after the birds had nested, but intensive agriculture has destroyed their habitats.

Now only the Shannon Callows, Donegal and north Mayo are left. The total national population is down to 130 to 140 calling birds.

Mr Caffrey told the two-day seminar at the National Museum that the curlew, another bird associated with the Irish summer, was also under threat because of farmland drainage improvements.

Its numbers are down by 70 per cent. He warned that the bird, one of only two Irish species on the list of globally endangered species, had disappeared from many parts of the country. Barn owls have declined by a similar figure of 70 per cent in the last 30 years as a result of changing habitats and the effects of rat poisoning.

Mr Caffrey said, however, that the bird’s diet now included greater white toothed shrews, a species that people did not know even existed in Ireland.

Mr Caffrey has been working on the Bird Atlas, a work which has taken four years and is done every couple of decades to monitor bird populations. He said there was good news with buzzards making a comeback and the greater spotted woodpecker had also started breeding in Ireland.