Help us understand Irish bird migration

Hello,

My name is Seán Ronayne (Irish Wildlife Sounds ) and I am passionate about recording nocturnal migration of birds in Ireland using autonomous recording devices, to further our understanding of this relatively unknown aspect of our avifauna. With our birds under ever-increasing pressures from climate change, habitat loss and other factors, the more we know about them, the better fixed we are to do something to help.

In June 2021 I established a permanent nocturnal listening station at Lissagriffin, Mizen Head to monitor migrating birds at night. This device ran for 133 nights and allowed me to create the first study of nocturnal migration of birds in Ireland. This has given me an in-depth insight into arrival dates, departure dates, dates of peak activity, species composition, presence/absence of rare species, among a whole wealth of other information. All of my work is made public for all to see - with the previously mentioned report available to view here.

Unfortunately, when I went to change the batteries in late December, I discovered that the device was no longer present, presumably stolen. Now that the pilot study is complete, I am going to set up a longer-term study to build enough data to gain a statistically robust understanding of nocturnal migration and phenological trends of our birds. It will require a large amount of my personal time which I am more than happy to do, as I feel like this work has a lot of value.

If you also see the value in the work that I am doing, I would be extremely grateful if you could contribute towards this project, in order to replace the equipment lost. I hope to get everything set up and in position by February in order to be ready for the first stages of spring migration.

Donation money will be used to replace the following:

SM4 mini + Battery pack + Microphone

Lithium-ion batteries

256GB SD Card

Wind protector

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Seán.