Saving the corncrake - Encouraging figures

THOUGH the population increase was relatively small, anything that suggests the terminal decline of Ireland’s corncrake population might be arrested, if not reversed is very welcome.

Last year, for the first time in six years, the country’s population increased.

Though only five extra birds were recorded to reach a total population of 133, this is the first good news in a story that had an air of depressing inevitability about it for many years.