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.