"I'll admit it's summer when I hear a corncrake" he said with some exaggeration. Where will he hear one? Birdwatch Ireland told him. Said Annemarie McDevitt, the project officer, speaking from Banagher: "At the bridge here you should be lucky and at Shannonbridge . . . after ten o'clock at night". As everyone knows, the bird has been disappearing from the scene at an alarming rate. Helpful measures have been taken in this country and elsewhere. Perhaps the fall may be checked or even a revival started. The French expert Joel Broyer puts the decisive period here in Ireland at 1900. It accelerated around 1939.
Broyer estimates that Russia, Byelorussia, Ukraine, the three Baltic states with Poland, Romania and Bulgaria may have from 80,000 to more than 200,000 singing males. The rest of Europe adds up to at most 10,000. He writes that more precise information is needed from Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine.
Very versatile and resourceful birds they are. Reapers uncovered a corkcrake's nest containing seven eggs. The female was able to escape. A naturalist observer hid nearby when the harvesters had gone. The mother came back and almost without hesitation sat onto the nest again and looked around. She quickly seems to have realised that it was impossible to stay, and took her decision. Using her beak, she managed to place one egg under her wing, then did the same for the other side. Finally, she took one in her beak and disappeared into nearby reeds. Soon she was back for the others and so the clutch was saved. (J. Kunstler 1908, Account from the Biological Society - of France presumably - vol XIV p.105).
We now and then see corkcrakes on television. In still pictures, such as in Broyer's book Le Rale des Genets, the delicacy and grace of the bird when on the ground comes home to you. And the colours. Most of us know it's a brownish creature but, seen close, the chocolate specks on the back and the bright red around the wings give an altogether more distinguished effect. There is a story of corncrakes in the Val de Saone in France. One year floods in its favourite nesting places lasted longer than usual. They seemed to find other hides. Then the floods went down and, weeks late, the majority moved into their old haunts.
What do they eat? During reproduction: insects, molluscs, worms, spiders, the odd egg, the odd nestling maybe. Our other term for corncrake is land rail. The French call it Rale des genets, the latter being genista or broom. Y