Time to count all the birds in your life

BIRDWATCH Ireland needs your help; they want you to report any cuckoos, swallows or swifts which you see during the next few weeks. These three bird species are easy to identify, even without binoculars, so you don’t have to be a regular birdwatcher to do your bit.

In the case of the cuckoo, it’s not seeing the bird which matters but hearing it. The famous two-note song is low-pitched, it travels well through the air and a cuckoo can be heard when it’s a long way off. The call is unmistakable, although misguided tone-deaf souls have been known to confuse it with the “woo-woo” cooing of a wood pigeon. If you do manage to get close, you will see a medium-sized bird with a longish tail, which you might mistake for a sparrowhawk. Cuckoos will arrive later this month. One was heard on the April 2, 1902, the earliest Irish record.

Nobody is sure how many cuckoos we have. They are difficult to count, mainly because the males, who do the calling, move around a lot. The bird was very common a century ago. Declines were reported from about 1950 but no population estimates were made back then. According to the BTO-IWC Atlas of Breeding Birds, there were between 17,500 and 35,000 pairs in Britain and Ireland in 1972. Numbers fell by about a quarter during the next three decades.

Changes in farming methods have decimated the insect population and there is less food for cuckoos nowadays. Little is known of the bird’s life in Africa.

It’s possible that changes there are a factor in the decline, but a reduction in the number of chicks produced in Europe each year is a more plausible explanation.

The cuckoo, famously, lays its eggs in other birds’ nests. The host species in Ireland is usually the meadow pipit, a little brown bird of open spaces known, in Munster, as the “tit-lark”. Pipit numbers have fell and there are fewer nests in which cuckoos can lay.

The swallow is another familiar bird, but it can be confused with two of its relatives. The house martin and the sand martin belong to the swallow family and have similar lifestyles, catching flying insects and nesting in colonies. However, if you know what to look out for, the three species are easy to tell apart. Sand martins are light brown on the back and white underneath, whereas swallows and house martins are black and white. House martins have gleaming white rumps, very conspicuous in flight. The tail is short, while the swallow has long streamers. If a bird is flying directly overhead and you can’t see its rump, check for streamers.

Swallow numbers have been dropping since about 1980. Climate change in Africa may be a factor or, perhaps, drought in the Sahel region in Africa is making desert crossings more difficult. However, Niall Hatch of BirdWatch thought that changes in farming methods here were the likely culprit. A few decades ago, farm buildings were simple structures with lots of openings, allowing swallows to wander in and out at will. The old thick wooden rafters were ideal platforms for nests. Milk and pig feed was often left exposed and dung littered the ground, which meant that there were plenty of insects on which swallows could feed.

Modern buildings are less swallow-friendly and lack window openings, ledges and rafters. With more hygienic farming, there are fewer insects.

The swift looks like a large swallow but is not related to the smaller bird. It comes from a much more ancient evolutionary line and resembles the swallow because it too lives on flying insects. Both birds evolved similar profiles, an example of “convergent evolution”. It is easy to tell swifts and swallows apart. Whereas swallows are white underneath, the swift looks black all over. In fact, it’s a very dark brown with a whitish patch on the chin. A black bird wheeling around on long swept-back wings will be a swift. Faint high-pitched screams may be audible. Swifts nest in church spires, bell towers or under the eaves of tall buildings. The swift family is essentially tropical, the species which visits us being unusual in venturing so far north. That it should be declining in this era of global warming is odd; there ought to be more insects on the wing in the warmer conditions. Change in building design is blamed; swifts too can’t get sites for nests.

Springalive is a pan-European project of which BirdWatch is a part. Another species, which is also being targeted, is not found here. White storks visit Ireland very occasionally but you are unlikely to encounter one unless you travel to Spain, Portugal or Eastern Europe.

With the help of the public, it should be possible to monitor the progress of the birds as they arrive in Europe in spring. This, it is hoped, will enable us to develop conservation strategies. A website has been set up where you can observe the progress of the birds “in real time”. So get out there and find the birds!

www.springalive.net,www.birdwatchireland.ie. Phone [phone]