Corncrake regains toehold in English countryside

08/03/2007 00:00:00 A pioneering conservation scheme is restoring a small corner of the country to a time when an effectively-extinct bird was a familiar inhabitant of English farmland.

A project to reintroduce the corncrake, a dove-sized ground-nesting farmland bird, to England has had its best year yet with four male corncrakes uttering their distinctive rasping ‘crex-crex’ calls from one corner of Cambridgeshire. The corncrake declined in England and most of Europe due to intensive farming methods.

Amazingly, two of the four birds are brothers, that were released as chicks last year. These birds were among the largest of 78 chicks to be released in 2005 at the RSPB’s Nene Washes reserve after being captive-bred at Whipsnade. The third male is a half-brother, while the fourth male is of unknown origin, possibly from Scotland. The corncrake used to be widespread across Britain and Ireland in summer (it spends each winter in Africa), but was forced out of many of its former range as farming became more mechanised. Before the project started in 2001, corncrakes were only found in the UK on islands off the north and west of Scotland, where an intense conservation effort is restoring numbers.

The project – a partnership between RSPB, English Nature, Zoological Society of London, and more recently Pensthorpe Conservation Trust – hopes to re-introduce the corncrake to the Nene Washes. The wet grasslands of the washes are being managed to provide returning corncrakes with optimal habitat for nesting. This project involves captive-rearing corncrake chicks and releasing them on the site in the hope that they survive the perils of the migration to Africa and return the following spring to nest.

The corncrake first started to decline in England more than a century ago, due to the introduction of mechanised and intensive farming efforts. A group of corncrakes has been maintained at Pensthorpe for some years, as a key captive breeding conservation project. The corncrake’s selection as a focus for Pensthorpe’s conservation efforts was therefore highly fitting; Bill Jordan, Pensthorpes owner, has made it his business to pioneer a farming system which prioritises reducing the impact of farming on the environment and halting the decline of biodiversity in the British countryside.

Dr Mark Avery, of the RSPB, said: 'The corncrake has suffered badly across Europe, undergoing huge declines on the UK and the continent.'

Dr Phil Grice, of English Nature, said: “Corncrakes once bred in nearly every county in England, but by 1980 all regular breeding had stopped. We hope that this will mean that Cambridgeshire will become a stronghold for corncrakes to re-colonise the rest of England.”

Bill Jordan, Director of Pensthorpe Conservation Trust, commented: “I am thrilled we can contribute in a meaningful way to such an important conservation project, working alongside the dedicated experts. We are excited about our role in providing new chicks to the programme to help restore these important birds to their native habitat”.