Bird Ringing

The Munster Ringing group has been continuing its seven year programme of ringing birds at a number of sites across the region, to try and build up some solid data about what is happening to our bird populations in this time of environmental degradation. One of their regular ringing sites is the Cabragh Wetlands, and it is worth stopping if you see them at work – there is often something interesting to see.

A recent capture was a Common Grasshopper Warbler (locustella naevia) – a tiny, secretive bird with an olive-brown back, whitish underside and a faint white stripe over its eye. A very shy bird, it loves to hide in rough tussocky undergrowth and thickets, and will tolerate both damp and dry habitats. It must have found a perfect summer home at Cabragh after its extraordinary migration from sub-SaharanAfrica.

Its numbers have declined significantly in recent years, though it is still spread widely in Ireland and Britain. Loss of habitat appears to be the main cause; people are too quick to dismiss the sort of rough ground the grasshopper warbler loves as valueless.

When people are about, the grasshopper warbler will stay hidden (a sensible bird!), but you have a good chance of hearing it. Its call is easily confused with that of an insect, and has been compared to a mill- or spinning-wheel, or the winding mechanism of a fishing-rod reel. It seems to be able to throw its voice, like a ventriloquist, and the sound can carry over a mile on a still night. One estimate is that it can ‘sing’ 1400 double notes per minute, and up to 250,000 during a single night.

Preserve habitat, cherish and enjoy the presence of such amazing creatures.

Snipes in the air!

Anyone walking through the Wetlands on these summer evenings will hear the strange sound of the snipe as it dives through the air. This sound is made by its outer tail feathers and the sound has been likened to that of a kid goat – hence its name in Irish “An Gabhairin” or the little goat. The sound is made by the male during the breeding season and the perched male shown here makes a chucka-chucka call. If you stumble across the snipe as you walk along the paths it explodes into the air in a zig-zag flight, with a rasping ‘creech’ call. Its plumage is brown, with golden-buff and black stripes on the head and back and white edges to its tail. It uses that long beak to probe in the mud for worms and invertebrates, the sensitive tip helping it feel for prey. The snipe has the extraordinary ability to open the tip of its bill while the rest remains closed. Hidden amidst vegetation the nest usually contains four eggs, olive-brown with dark blotches. After 20 days the young hatch and leave the nest almost immediately, able to fly after just two weeks and fully grown after seven. The snipe is the bird of the wetlands and the natural choice for our logo.

The Swift

Swifts (Apus apus) are birds that can be seen flying at high speeds and screaming as they fly in these summer months, as they catch flies in the Cabragh Wetlands. They are experts at this and parent swifts returning with food for their young reveal a large bulge below the beak due to a mass of insects packed into the throat pouch glued together in saliva.

The family scientific name, Apodidae, comes Ancient Greek, meaning "without feet", since swifts have very short legs and never settle voluntarily on the ground, perching instead on vertical surfaces. This is because it would be too difficult, if not impossible, for swifts to take off from the ground due to their short legs. Due to this swifts even sleep and mate on the wing. Swifts have a worldwide distribution in tropical and temperate areas, but like swallows and martins, the swifts of temperate regions are strongly migratory and winter in the tropics.

Swifts have a characteristic shape, with a short forked tail and very long swept-back wings that resemble a boomerang. They are all dark apart from a whitish chin. Swifts use the same nest year after year, merely adding fresh material. This is caught in the air. As a result, building is erratic being most frequent when there is sufficient wind to sweep suitable material into the air. The nest is glued to a vertical surface with saliva, which is the basis for bird's nest soup.

Greylag Geese

Recently a small flock of Greylag geese can be seen in Cabragh Wetlands each day on the flooded grasslands and are easily visible from the pathways. These geese are the ancestors of most domestic geese. The geese are migratory, moving south or west in winter,. This species is one of the last to migrate, and it is thought that "greaylag" signifies in English "late", "last", or "slow", as in laggard, a loiterer, or old terms such as lagman, the last man, lagteeth, the posterior molar or "wisdom" teeth (as the last to appear), and lagclock, a clock that is behind time. Thus the Greylag Goose is the grey goose, which in England when the name was given, was not strongly migratory but lagged behind the other wild goose species when they left for their northern breeding quarters.