Marginal ring ouzel could be next to disappear

WE WORRY that curlews and corncrakes are disappearing, but other species are going to the wall unlamented. A hundred years ago, for example, the corn bunting bred throughout the country. Then decline set in. By 1950, this plump little seed-eater was confined to headlands and islands. During the 1970s, its evocative song, “the jangling of a bunch of keys”, could still be heard on the Mullet Peninsula and a few other places. A decade later, the bird was gone.

The days of another marginal species now seem to be numbered. “The ring ouzel,” declares Alan Mee in the current edition of Irish Birds, “is one of the most poorly studied and threatened species in Ireland.”