During the next few weeks a midlands bridge will become a magnet for hundreds of people who want to hear the corncrake.
Banagher Bridge, linking Leinster and Connacht, has become a popular listening post for those who want to hear the corncrake, of which there are probably fewer than 300 in the entire island.
However, the privilege of hearing the bird sing comes at a price. It is a night bird, making most of its calls between midnight and 3 a.m. The meadows along the river Shannon, between Athlone and Portumna, hold the highest concentration of corncrakes.
That is because the habitat there - the callows - allows the gentle bird to breed and rear its chicks until they are strong enough to make the return flight to Africa.
The need to conserve that habitat has been recognised by BirdWatch Ireland and Duchas, the Heritage Service, and the farming community.
Special grants were put in place some years ago to reward farmers for carrying out their work in a corncrake-friendly way. That means they do not mow their meadows until very late in the season and when they do, they mow them from the centre outwards.
This gives the bird a chance to survive because the collapse of corncrake numbers in Ireland coincided with the introduction of silage cutting when grass is harvested from May onwards.
According to Ann-Marie McDevitt, who is co-ordinating the Corncrake Project on the callows this year with colleague Kevin Corrigan, nearly 1,500 acres of Shannon meadowland are being farmed under the scheme.
She said that the first corncrake arrived in the area, at Clonown, near Athlone, on April 18th last. On the following Saturday, the bird was heard singing in Baylough. Four days later, the bird was heard in Portumna.
"We will begin our field work on May 20th and it will continue until July 10th. The birds will have arrived by May 20th and our work will begin," she said.
She said the impact of the scheme, which now covers 80 per cent of the callows, has dramatically slowed the rate of decline in the corncrake population.
Ms McDevitt said Banagher had become a target area for the many people who wanted to hear the bird sing and she advised a visit to the Galway end of the bridge between midnight and 3 a.m.
Ms McDevitt and her colleagues can be contacted at Crank House, Banagher, on 0509-51676 or Email crex@indigo.ie.