Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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?
Chapter 2: 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.
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Chapter 3: 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.
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Chapter 4: Why are rooks considered a common but misunderstood bird?
Yeah, I suppose you sort of see that with other colonial nesting birds as well, that they might be quite jealously protective of a very small area, but it can be a very small area indeed, yeah. And they will, when possible, they'll reuse the same nest the next year, which is an interesting kind of question, and it's something that...
What I've been seeing with this survey, what I've been finding hasn't exactly aligned with my expectations because the classic natural history literature on rooks will talk about this long established rookery on the edge of a village or somewhere that they've been in for forever and they'll reuse the same nests.
We're listening to them here all of the time, that very distinctive caw, caw, which is again the Irish name. Would you call this singing or do they sing?
It's a really distinctive sound, isn't it? Well, it's that sort of classic crow kind of caw. It's communication and it's signalling that they're there, but they do have other types of vocalisations, including ones that are much more what we would think of as a song. We don't hear them as often now, but they do have them, these actually quite nice sounding, sort of clacking, well, you know...
It's not quite a blackbird, but it's more musical than this anyway. And then there's other interesting calls. I haven't heard any just in the time we've been under this rookery, but while I've been counting them, I do hear them make these much gentler, softer sounds to each other, which remind me a little bit of quite a lot of how a raven communicates.
You know, that sort of a little bit like a honk, but, you know, it sounds very vocal. It sounds like talking in a way that this type of call doesn't. So I have heard that from them.
Looking at them as well here too, both sexes are the same. I can't tell apart the male from the female and they don't change in summer, winter either.
That's right. I mean, as a whole, their kind of plumage and appearance is quite sort of plain. You know, they're dark all over. They stay that way than the males and females. They look the same.
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