Eoghan Murphy

speaker

214 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 27 Jul

Eoghan Murphy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Mooney Goes Wild · Headstarting Chicks Helps Ireland's Curlew Numbers · 27 Jul 2026 podcast

Well, with curlew, what we tend to see happening is that after 7, 10, 15 days in the wild, with a wild pair, the female will generally head off about her business.

I suppose she's put in most, used up most of her resources, even though they share incubation, females tend to do more of it, and she has produced three or four very, very large eggs, which obviously takes a toll on her.

So she heads off.

The chicks then stay with the adult male, and the adult male actually does quite a good job of rearing curlew.

We know from oyster catcher in Iceland and that the males stay around with them.

And there was a study done on which oyster catchers from Iceland are resident, which ones migrate.

And the study showed that it depends on whether the male was a migratory male or whether the male was a resident male.

So loads of interesting things been learned in relation to our waders.

What we did with our decision, why did we decide to release birds?

So we have 20 UK birds getting released on Lough Carrib, we have 20 UK birds getting released on Lough Rea, and we have a combination of Irish birds getting released in both places.

Why did we pick those places?

A couple of reasons.

We did a decision-making matrix.

The islands on Lough Rea and Lough Carrib, we can be very sure that predation risk is very low.

So we know there's no foxes on them, we know there's no badgers, hedgehogs, stoats, pine marten, all these other things that love to eat young curlew.

And we also, there's an abundant food source.

So you have loads of sedges, you have loads of aquatic invertebrates in your area.

And you also have a very good chance of integrating very quickly with wild bird populations.

So we have wild curlew in those areas.

We still have wild chicks on islands in Lough Reagh and Lough Corrib.

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