Panel: Richard Collins, Éanna Ní Lamhna, Jim Wilson & Niall Hatch

Reporter: Terry Flanagan

In addition to listening to us on RTÉ Radio One at 22:00 every Monday night, don't forget that you can also listen back to each of our programmes any time you like at www.rte.ie/mooney. There, you will find an extensive archive of past broadcasts, conveniently split into different topics and segments.

In tonight’s programme, Derek and the panel look forward to Dawn Chorus Live, our annual seven-hour celebration of birdsong, which this year will take place from midnight to 07:00 on Bank Holiday Monday 4th May on RTÉ Radio One and RTÉ Lyric FM.

One of our key targets on the night will be the sound of the Great Spotted Woodpecker, a species that first began to colonise Ireland roughly 20 years ago and which has, slowly but surely, begun to play an increasing role in the sound of the Irish dawn chorus.

To help you to get to know these fascinating birds a bit better, our suggestion from the extensive Mooney Goes Wild archives this week is a documentary that our own Terry Flanagan made all about them for us. Entitled – appropriately enough – The Great Spotted Woodpecker, it was first broadcast in May 2022.

To listen to this documentary from the Mooney Goes Wild archives, visit https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/11403346/

Looking forward to Dawn Chorus Live on Sunday 4th May

First up on tonight’s programme, our panel looks forward to one of the biggest and most anticipated natural history broadcasting events of the year: our annual Dawn Chorus Live programme.

Each May, Derek and the Mooney Goes Wild team bring you this very special broadcast on

International Dawn Chorus Day. Winner of both the National PPI Radio Award for Innovation and the coveted International Rose d’Or award, the programme has become one of the radio highlights of the year, not just in Ireland, but right across Europe and beyond. Featuring live birdsong and expert commentary, it offers an unmatched live celebration of our natural heritage.

This year, our live broadcast will be taking place on Sunday 4th May when, of course, the Mooney Goes Wild team will once again be bringing listeners across Ireland and the world a celebration of Irish birdsong from midnight through to 7:00am on RTÉ Radio One, in a simulcast with RTÉ Lyric FM.

The dawn chorus is one of the most magical experiences in nature: a multitude of birds of many different species all singing together in harmony as morning breaks and light begins to fill the skies. As our natural world’s most impressive and renowned concert, it is almost as though it has been tailor-made for radio. It 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.

While Derek Mooney steers the ship from the RTÉ Radio Centre in Dublin, 'home base’ for the live broadcast once again this year will be BirdWatch Ireland’s Cuskinny Marsh Nature Reserve in Cobh, Co. Cork, where our main presentation team of Jim Wilson and Niall Hatch will introduce the dawn chorus and, while the birdsong builds in real time, explain to listeners what our feathered friends are getting up to as the sun rises.

Across the country, Richard Collins, Éanna Ní Lamhna, Eric Dempsey, Terry Flanagan and Declan Murphy will also bring us the birdsong from their parts of Ireland, as the sun gradually breaks the horizon and the birds begin their performances. We will also be broadcasting some of our most popular Nature on One documentaries as we get ready for the main event.

As the first birds warm up on the morning, our colleagues in RTÉ Lyric FM will also be adding a musical dimension to the morning’s soundscape:

·Aedín Gormley (Aedín in the Afternoon) will delve into the RTÉ Lyric FM music library to reflect on how composers and songwriters have been inspired by birds and bird song. Her choices include The Island Terns (Bill Whelan), On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring (Delius) and Séamus and Caoimhe Uí Fhlatharta’s great rendition of Blackbird.

·Lorcan Murray (Lorcan Murray’s Classic Drive) will bring you his bird-themed compositionssuite, including The Mountain Lark by Michelle Mulcahy, Simon & Garfunkel’s Sparrow, Dawn Sky by Ola Gjeilo and The Cuckoo of Neffin by Colm Mac Con Iomaire, reflecting his deep appreciation of the links between music and the natural world.

·Áine Gallagher will contributes a meditative set inspired by the Ambient Orbit series, fusing birdsong and ambient textures for a period of sonic calm.

For more information about some of the key birds to listen out for during the dawn chorus, visit https://www.rte.ie/lifestyle/nature/2018/0504/960296-birds-of-the-dawn-chorus/

Cuskinny Marsh Nature Reserve

There is a very good reason why we keep going back to Cuskinny Marsh Nature Reserve for our main dawn chorus location each year. This small but perfectly formed wildlife haven, which is managed by BirdWatch Ireland, is situated near Cobh, Co. Cork and has proven to be a truly excellent broadcast base for us.

We first gave it a go, at the suggestion of local ornithologist, author and broadcaster Jim Wilson, who assured us that the mix of multiple habitats within close proximity of one another, coupled with the lack of extraneous noise and human disturbance, made it the perfect location from which to beam birdsong to the world . . . and he was absolutely right!

On tonight’s programme, in anticipation of Dawn Chorus Live, Jim joins us to tell us more about Cuskinny Marsh Nature Reserve, the array of birds that call it home and the sounds we can expect to hear on the big night.

For more information about BirdWatch Ireland’s Cuskinny Marsh Nature Reserve, visit http://cuskinnynaturereserve.com/

Portlaoise Pigeons

We recently had an email in from a listener called Alan Phelan. Alan lives in Portlaoise, Co. Laois and was surprised recently to come across a pair of pigeons nesting on his windowsill. Ever since he first discovered them, he been fascinated by their antics, just metres away from his sitting room couch.

Not knowing much about pigeons or their breeding behaviour, and wanting to learn more, Alan got in touch with the us here at Mooney Goes Wild to see if we could help. It sounded like the perfect mission for our roving reporter, Terry Flanagan, who popped down to the O'Moore County to visit Alan and to take a look at his fledgling family for tonight’s programme.

For more information about Ireland’s pigeon species, visit https://birdwatchireland.ie/irelands-birds-birdwatch-ireland/list-of-irelands-birds/?habitat=all&bird_size=all&bird_family=Pigeons+%26+Doves&bird_season=all&bird_color=all&bird_sort_order=all&title=

Curlew headstarting

Sadly, the once-abundant and widespread Curlew is today one of Ireland’s fastest declining and most threatened breeding bird species. Numbers of these iconic wading birds have plummeted in recent years, prompting grave concern for the species’ future and fears that it could soon be doomed to extinction.

But hope is not yet lost. Ambitious conservation projects, such as the Breeding Wader European Innovation Partnership (EIP), are underway, utilising a number of innovative methods to try to boost our Curlew population and improve the birds’ breeding success.

Chief amongst these is a technique called headstarting, where young Curlews are literally given a head start in life through the collection of eggs from wild nests, to be incubated in a special facility at Cork’s Fota Wildlife Park, so that the chicks can hatch in safety and be hand-reared, before being returned to the wild once they are old enough to fend properly for themselves.

Keen to learn more, for tonight’s programme Éanna Ní Lamhna travelled to Fota Island to speak with Declan O’Donovan, Animal Care Manager at Fota Wildlife Park, about how the headstarting work has been going, the work involved in hatching and rearing Curlew chicks and renewed hopes for the future of these magnificent birds.

For more information about the Curlew headstarting programme at Fota Wildlife Park, visit https://www.fotawildlife.ie/blogs/news/world-curlew-day-marks-the-launch-of-the-2025-breeding-waders-eip-headstarting-programme

For more information about Curlews, visit https://birdwatchireland.ie/birds/curlew/

Celebrating 30 years of Mooney Goes Wild!

It may only seem like yesterday that we first took to our microphones, but would you believe that next month Mooney Goes Wild will celebrate 30 years on air? Over that time, we have brough listeners across Ireland and, increasingly, the world literally thousands of wildlife-themed stories, interviews and insights, showcasing and celebrating all aspects of our astonishing natural world.

To celebrate this landmark occasion, our good friend and acclaimed documentary-maker Colm Flynn (whom you may have seen and heard quite a bit from in recent days in his "day job" as Vatican Correspondent with EWTN, the largest religious broadcaster in the world) has crafted a special documentary programme all about Mooney Goes Wild. Featuring contributions from (who else?) our key contributors, reminiscences from Derek and our panellists and a listen-back to some stand-out moments from our last three decades of broadcasting, it promises to be a true treat for all Mooney Goes Wild fans.

Colm’s documentary will be broadcast on RTÉ Radio One at 15:00 on Bank Holiday Monday, 5th May. To whet your appetites, on tonight’s programme we feature a clip from it, in which Richard Collins follows the progress of a project to teach young Trumpeter Swans, one of the rarest birds in North America, to migrate. Richard, Éanna and Niall also look forward to the documentary and share their thoughts on thirty years (and counting) of cutting-edge natural history broadcasting.

Do you have any favourite memories of Mooney Goes Wild over the years that you would like to share with us and the listening public? If so, please email us at mooney@rte.ie: we would love to hear from you.

Dawn Chorus preview

We finish tonight’s programme with a preview of the dawn chorus, to give you an idea of what to expect during our seven-hour live broadcast on Sunday 4th May. It promises to be another great programme, with lots of beautiful birdsong, expert commentary and fascinating insights into the avian world.

But, most importantly of all, we want to hear from you! We are counting on you, our loyal Mooney Goes Wild listeners, to send us your own recordings and live feeds of the birdsong performance happening near you. It could be the sound from your garden, your local park or woodland . . . or even just your open bedroom window.

To really get into the mood for this year’s Dawn Chorus Live on 4th May, you can listen back to last year’s programme in its entirety at https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22392045/