One of the most intriguing natural wildlife mysteries may soon be solved thanks to a novel cross-channel tracking project to discover where Irish cuckoos spend their winter months.
The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) hopes that the project will also answer the question of whether Irish cuckoos undertake a different migration strategy to their British counterparts across the Irish Sea.
Pictures: Valerie O’Sullivan
The tracking project is being undertaken by the NPWS in partnership with the British Trust for Ornithology.
The Minister of State for Heritage, Malcolm Noonan, a regular visitor to Killarney National Park, said he is looking forward to tracking the birds’ movements and ushering in a new era for bird monitoring in Ireland.
“Cuckoos are fascinating creatures and the Irish population’s migration patterns are something of a mystery so it will be very exciting to see the results of this innovative project,” he said.
“We’ve already seen one of the birds fly from Killarney National Park to Tipperary over the June bank holiday weekend and another has shot across to the east Cork coast before double-backing to Limerick.
“It will be fantastic to get a full picture of the movements of these birds at home, during their migration and when they hopefully return to our shores,” he said.
The cuckoo, along with the swallow and the corncrake, has a long history in Ireland as a harbinger of summer. It typically arrives in the last days of April which have often been referred to as ‘the time of the cuckoo.’
Cuckoos – or Cuach as gaelige – are a summer migrant to Ireland with adult birds resident here from April to early July, having spent the winter on the African continent.
They are a unique bird in Ireland as they lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and have no involvement in raising their young.
Across Ireland, the cuckoo has seen a 27 per cent reduction in breeding distribution between the first national census, Bird Atlas (1968-1972) and the most recent Bird Atlas (2007-2011). In the UK the decline is 40 per cent.
Population trends show large declines across England and Wales, with increases in Scotland and relative stability in Ireland where the cuckoo has displayed a population shift northwards and westwards, similar to a number of other migrants that winter in Africa’s humid regions. However, there is little known about the potential causes and drivers of these declines.
While the cuckoo has been well-studied during the breeding season, very little is known about the routes they take once they head off on migration or where in Africa they spend the winter months. If these areas of importance could be identified, then scientists would be able to better understand habitat pressures that affect losses of the cuckoo population.
In May of this year, the National Parks and Wildlife Service at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage linked up with the BTO cuckoo team to satellite track four Irish cuckoos – three from Killarney National Park and one from
The Burren in Co Clare. The birds were given names and fitted with satellite tags and their movements are being monitored.
The four birds tagged each have their own page – Cuach Torc, Cuach Cores, Cuach Carran and Cuach KP – on the BTO website and a special project page has been established on https://www.nationalparks.ie/killarney/.
This week the bird named Cuach Torc has leap-frogged Cores to take up pole position as the most southerly cuckoo being tracked.
On Sunday evening, Torc had just crossed the border into Northern Italy and was close to the village of Olivetta san Michele in the Province of Imperia, in Liguria.
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