The RTÉ Dawn Chorus
 – a new interactive CD and CD-Rom

The RTÉ Guide presents an updated, highly interactive, combined CD and CD-Rom of the Dawn Chorus featuring many new activities.

The RTÉ Dawn Chorus is free with the issue of the RTÉ Guide on sale Wednesday the 23rd May.

The key new feature in this year’s RTÉ Dawn Chorus, is the interactive CD-Rom format which makes it a great educational tool for children of all ages, both in and out of school.  It allows the user to:

• Explore visually, through the use of video clips, birds in their natural environments
• Listen to audio clips of the call signs for each individual bird
• Listen to narratives of facts and figures about each bird provided by the expert RTÉ Radio’s Mooney Goes Wild team
• Colour-in on screen, and print out images of the most popular birds from the Dawn Chorus ensemble
• Test listening and recognition skills by matching the bird calls to each bird.
• Compete and test knowledge in an interactive quiz
• Save bird illustrations as screensavers and/or wallpaper on PCs.

The original audio stays the same – giving the opportunity to listen to the special production by RTÉ’s Mooney Goes Wild team - finding out what the dawn chorus is, where the birds sing and how the birds sing.

When the Dawn Chorus CD was distributed with the RTÉ Guide in May 2005, it resulted in a sell out week for the magazine. Since then, there have been many requests for a repeat of this much loved phenomenon.

The RTÉ Dawn Chorus, FREE with the RTÉ Guide
On sale Wednesday, 23rd May 2007

	Derek Mooney

The dawn chorus never ceases. It moves, with the early morning light, like a great wave on the face of the Earth. At this moment, somewhere in the world, the birds are waking up and bursting into song. Our ancestors, from time immemorial, awoke to this sound. Bird songs were, for countless millennia, part of everyday life. Nowadays, however, locked away in our concrete houses, few of us ever hear them.

Exotic eco-holidays are all the rage; people, who can't drag themselves from the bed in the morning, endure long tedious flights, and jetlag, to encounter nature in far-off lands. Yet the wildlife on our doorsteps is as exciting as anything other countries have to offer. So, set the alarm clock, not for the airport taxi, but for an encounter with the birds. 'See Ireland first' as the slogan goes and 'hear Ireland's birds first'!

What is the Dawn Chorus?
It is collective sound of all the birds that sing at dawn. It usually refers to those sounds made by birds that sing during the breeding season, which for most birds in Ireland is between late March and the beginning of July. The dawn chorus is usually associated with woodland birds but it can be heard everywhere. Each habitat has its own distinctive "chorus members".

Ireland
Ireland is a small island on the western edges of the continent of Europe. Originally covered with broad-leaved woodlands the first settlers began to change the landscape forever.

Large areas were cleared and advances in agriculture eventually lead to a landscape of patchwork fields surrounded by stonewalls in the west and hedgerows in the east. Because of this patchwork of habitats we are fortunate here in Ireland to be able to hear a wide range of species in relatively small areas. These changes have had a great effect on the birds of Ireland. Some species have lost out by these changes while others have taken full advantage. Relatively recent changes, such as the advent of mechanisation in Irish farming, has led to a dramatic decline in birds of hay meadows.