These days there is a national day for everything. You know it's a national day when the air is filled with rattling collection cans and lapels are pinned with artefacts of various symbolic hues. The calendar is crammed with causes. Why should tomorrow be any different?
Actually it isn't. But if you think such events are strictly for the birds you might change your mind when you open your ears to the second annual National Dawn Chorus Day.
Perhaps it doesn't sound quite as plausible as National No Snoring Day, National No Smoking Day or National Member of Boyzone Gets Hitched Day, but there is more to life than sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll.
So says RTE's enthusiastic answer to David Attenborough, Derek Mooney, who believes the above cocktail, teamed with "murders and robberies" is what radio feeds the masses every day.
National Dawn Chorus Day, he suggests, is a little antidote to all that excitement and strife and it must be a good thing because Charlie Bird (gettit?) has been spotted auditioning for a part in the dawn chorus.
The beauty of this National Day is that it can be enjoyed from the comfort of your own bed. A good job, too, because the main part of it begins at 12.05 a.m. tomorrow and continues until 6 a.m. when the last chorus has dawned.
It is a six-hour live radio broadcast on birds.
"We chose the Cuskinny Marsh Nature Reserve in Cobh, Co Cork, for the broadcast because it offers a big variety of habitats and therefore more species of bird," says Jim Wilson, a member of the local branch of BirdWatch Ireland and co-presenter of the broadcast.
The wildlife programme, Mooney Goes Wild on One, has teamed up with the voluntary nature conservation group for what is a first in Irish broadcasting.
"We tried to broadcast the dawn chorus before but it just wasn't possible due to lack of manpower and equipment," says Mr Mooney.
This time they are prepared. Regular Wild on One panellists Eannna Ni Lamhna and Richard Collins will be on hand to document the activities of the birds in the marsh throughout the broadcast.
The broadcast will be interspersed with commissioned and archive programmes and documentaries on a variety of birds.
What's so special about the dawn chorus? "I prefer the sound of birds singing in the morning to traffic," says Mr Mooney. "I am a broadcaster and I have an empathy with the natural world. I don't have an agenda but if you didn't have birds singing, a walk in the park would be silence, with just the distant sound of cars."
YOU may imagine that birds sing first thing in the morning because they are happy to be alive. The kind of bird equivalent to singing in the shower. You would be wrong.
Apparently the anthropomorphic approach - putting human attributes on animals - is "lethal". "What they are really saying," says Jim Wilson, is `f..k off and mind your own patch' or `fancy a good time?' or `where the f..k are you?"' This month is the perfect time to record the dawn chorus. It's the breeding season, so birds are even more vociferous about marking and defending their territory. While some, like the robin and the skylark, have inspired composers with their tunes, birds like the pheasant are less talented. "But it's like an orchestra," says Wilson. "They all have a part to play".
There are over 400 species and more than 10 million birds in this country. But some species have suffered a massive decline in recent years. In 1988 there were 900 pairs of corncrakes in Ireland; by 1997 the number had fallen to 149.
BirdWatch Ireland is setting up a phone link with its 20 branches around the country so that the who, when and where of the dawn chorus can be documented. Links with Ghana and the Netherlands are also planned. A BirdWatch hotline will be set up so that the public can join in.
"The interesting thing is that if we had TV cameras we wouldn't pick up half of the visuals as the pictures we will be placing in people's minds. It's real public service broadcasting and, hopefully, will be the start of something really good," says Mr Mooney.
