Counting Rooks
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Let's go to Terry Flanagan now at his home in Dublin 15. Terence, tell us about your report for this week. Yes, well, Derek, you were talking about hooded crows earlier. Well, this week's report is with Dr. Fionn O'Markic. Fionn is working with the National Parks and Wildlife Service and they're undertaking a study monitoring rookery numbers throughout the country. And they're doing this to compare it with a similar survey conducted in 2017. Fionn has two study areas in County Kildare. Each is a square five kilometres by five kilometres. And I recently met up with him as he undertook a count at one of his study sites.
There's a rookery in here. Terry will stop and take a look at it.
Okay, there's probably, what, 10 or 12 or maybe more nests there, are there?
What is the purpose of monitoring rook populations?
I think by kind of turning around here, I think there's slightly more. I think there's about, I think there's 16 I can count, yeah.
And they're all on the top of those trees there. I think they look like sycamore trees.
That sounds right, yes, I think so.
Now you're doing research on these rooks, not just at this particular rookery, but in the whole of North Kildare.
That's right. With the National Parks and Wildlife Service, we're doing a survey across about 12% of the area of County Kildare in squares that were first randomly sampled just under 10 years ago in 2017.
How does the 2023 rook survey compare to the 2017 findings?
And a survey was done to count how many rookeries there were and how many occupied nests in each rookery. And we're returning to those same areas now to see, are they in the same places? What are the trends of the numbers, you know, increases and decreases and so on?
Most people like birds, but rooks and crows in general are not that well liked. However, despite that, and despite the fact that they live in close association to humans, their numbers seem to be doing really well.
Well, it's an interesting one, yeah. I think sometimes animals that live in such close proximity to us, sometimes it seems a bit like familiarity can breed contempt, I suppose, and it is true that they have been known to cause issues when they're at large numbers. In Ireland, the Irish landscape seems to have suited them quite well. I mean, rookeries are something that are kind of almost ubiquitous part of the Irish countryside, really. It's not always the case in every other European country, though, so... The most recent version of the European red list of birds came out in 2021 and it actually bumped the ruck down from being least concerned to being vulnerable in terms of its conservation status because its population was declining across more than 50% of its range in Europe.
That's really interesting because no matter where you go in Ireland, particularly rural Ireland, you hear that sound that we're listening to here now.
That's right, and it means that the Irish population, which is large, could end up representing a more and more significant portion of the European population. It's been highlighted now at the EU level that Ireland holds, I think, nearly 25% of the EU population. One of the factors there, of course, is that a very large RUC population in the UK is no longer counted as part of the EU population, but it just goes to show that something that's very familiar and common to us might not always be so familiar and common everywhere and for all time.
And that's why it's so important to continue doing this research, which to some people might say, oh, should we always know that there's lots and lots of roots there? But we really need the data to show that.
That's right, definitely. It's always important to have a handle on the trends in common species as well as the uncommon ones. Because I suppose every species that's ended up being uncommon or rare wasn't always as uncommon or rare as it is now. In a lot of cases, things can be common until they aren't anymore, you know. So it's always important to keep an eye out.
Okay, I just watched one here. He's just landing overhead. Oh, two of them. Four, five. They're a very social bird. Explain what's happening there.
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