A visit from the Corncrake Officer

Clonown N.S. June 2000

On Friday the 1^st 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 15^th 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.