A visit from the Corncrake
Officer
Clonown N.S. June 2000
On Friday the 1st of June,
Christine Croghan, the corncrake officer, came to our school. She works with
Birdwatch Ireland.
She showed us a video about the corncrakes
and other birds in the Shannon Callows.
Once there were plenty of corncrakes in
Ireland as farmers cut their hay late in those days
Then when silage making was invented
farmers could cut their hay earlier and corncrakes had no place to make their
nests. Corncrakes were nearly extinct.
In
1992 Birdwatch Ireland started to ask farmers to delay mowing until August 15th
to give the corncrakes a chance to rear their young. A lot of farmers helped.
There
are only 3 places that the corncrake still nests, Tory Island, Mayo and the
Shannon Callows.
Last
year corncrake officers counted about 100 pairs of nesting birds in these three
places.
66 of these were in the Shannon Callows and 8
were in the Garbh Inch in Clonown.