News 2014

Swiftboxes go live

25 Apr 2014

UCC's swiftboxes are now in place and awaiting the return of swifts (Apus apus) from Africa.

"The Common Swift (or Swift) is a medium sized bird somewhat similar to Swallow, but much larger, a faster flier and noisier!  Soon they will arrive in Ireland and spend about three months in our cities and towns, screaming across the sky", says Prof John O'Halloran of the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.

"At University College Cork in collaboration with RTE’s Derek Mooney we have set up 6 swift nest boxes with web cams deployed.  We hope to attract these iconic birds to nest in these boxes in the coming days. To help attract them to the boxes we have been playing a recording of Swift calls for 24 hours, seven days a week for the last 10 days.  We hope that these recordings will attract the birds to nest in the boxes and by observing them using the nest cameras we will gain a deeper understanding of their biology and gain a glimpse of secret lives of these amazing birds".

You can check out the LIVE feed from UCC's swiftboxes here.

Read John O'Halloran's blog post about the project here.

You can also follow the progress of this project by tuning into Mooney Goes Wild on RTE Radio One.

School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences

An Scoil Eolaíochtaí Bitheolaíocha, Domhaneolaíocha agus Comhshaoil

Distillery Fields, North Mall, University College Cork, Ireland , T23 N73K.

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