{"id":24797,"date":"2023-04-06T12:56:07","date_gmt":"2023-04-06T10:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=24797"},"modified":"2023-04-06T12:56:07","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T10:56:07","slug":"crake-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/2023\/04\/06\/crake-expectations\/","title":{"rendered":"Crake expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Only a little bigger than a blackbird, secretive corncrakes are summer visitors, flying here from Africa under the cover of darkness and arriving in April, ready for the breeding season <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Crake expectations<\/h2>\n\n

How could a farmland bird with an extraordinary call, which was once as familiar as the blackbird, have been driven from all but the outer fringes of the British Isles? James Fair <\/strong>investigates the case of the vanishing corncrake <\/p>\n\n

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In the breeding season, corncrakes hide their nests in thick vegetation at least 20cm tall, in pastures, meadows and marshes <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
<\/div>
\n

CORNCRAKE FACT FILE <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 DIET<\/strong>: A wide range of invertebrates, including many different types of insects, spiders, slugs and worms. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 BREEDING SEASON<\/strong>: They arrive back in Britain in mid-April, producing their first brood of chicks by late May to mid-June. Females will then have a second brood, and even \u2013 if time allows \u2013 a third. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 EGGS: <\/strong>Females typically lay between six and 10 eggs. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 FLEDGING: <\/strong>Incubation takes up to 19 days. Chicks are looked after for 14 days after hatching and fully fledge after 34\u201338 days. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 LIFESPAN: <\/strong>They are short-lived birds \u2013 most will only make it back to Britain for one breeding season. Some calling males have been recorded for three years. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n

If you were asked to compile a list of birds celebrated in British culture, what would you say? Nightingale, skylark and robin perhaps? Owl or swan, possibly? My guess is that you wouldn\u2019t think of the corncrake, but it\u2019s there, like an occasional faint streak in a stick of rock. <\/p>\n\n

The 19th-century English poet John Clare eulogised the strange and ubiquitous call of the corncrake in The <\/em>Landrail, <\/em>while there is a more lascivious Scottish folk song about the meeting of two young lovers on the banks of the River Doon in Ayr, where \u201cthe echo mocks the corncrakes among the whinny knowes\u201d. Stanley Baldwin, pillar of the establishment and Prime Minister on three occasions in the 1920s and 30s, described \u201cthe corncrake on a dewey morning\u201d as one of the sounds of England, along with \u201cthe tinkle of hammer on anvil in the country smithy and the scythe against the whetstone\u201d. <\/p>\n\n

So, in the early 20th century, corncrakes were virtually as common in the countryside as blackbirds are today. However, by the 1980s and 90s \u2013 just 60 years later \u2013 they had disappeared, \u201camong the most spectacular changes in range of any British bird species\u201d, according to the UK\u2019s foremost corncrake expert, Rhys Green, emeritus professor of conservation science at the University of Cambridge. <\/p>\n\n

But let\u2019s start at the beginning: what are corncrakes and what\u2019s special about them? Why did they disappear and are we doing anything to bring them back? <\/p>\n\n

\n\n

\u201cCorncrakes are renowned for their call, usually described as a rasping \u2018crex crex'”<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n
\n\n
SECRETIVE AND ELUSIVE <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

Corncrakes are small, slightly dumpy birds, the size of a song thrush. They are part of the rail family, which includes <\/em>coots and moorhens, and they come to Britain from Africa to breed, and for this they require pastures with tall vegetation in which to hide and feed. They are unremarkable to look at, though I say that with slight misgiving because I have only ever caught the backside of one retreating into cover at dusk. They are mainly renowned for their call, usually described as a rasping sound, \u2018crex crex\u2019, from where it gets its Latin name Crex crex<\/em>. Personally, I find it more helpful to imagine someone playing a washboard.<\/p>\n\n

The machair grasslands of the Inner Hebridean island of Tiree are the corncrake\u2019s stronghold, and you have got a high chance of hearing one there between May and August, especially if you catch up with RSPB conservation officer John Bowler. To be honest, familiarise yourself with the song and you won\u2019t need him. Nevertheless, it is John who introduces me to the mysterious world of the corncrake \u2013 what we know of it, anyway. They are ground-nesting birds, but unlike most waders, they do it in total secrecy. It\u2019s only really through the declamations of the crexing males that we know they are around at all, and even their arrival (April) and departure (usually in September) is largely unseen.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\"\"
The male makes his distinctive rasping call, which sounds like a stick on a washboard, to attract a female. Once the male has successfully mated, he moves a little distance away and continues to sing to attract another mate <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

\u201cWe do know they arrive and leave by night,\u201d John says. \u201cA colleague was counting seabirds one night, and they came towards him, flying like bricks. He wondered what these fat little birds were, then they dropped down on the headland and he could see they were corncrakes. That\u2019s the only time I\u2019ve heard of people seeing them flying in from migration.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

They are masters of staying out of sight. During a week on Tiree at the height of the breeding season, I heard the call every day, but saw not a twitch. If I\u2019d known, I would have followed the advice of Rhys Green. \u201cGo to a place where there are males singing at night,\u201d he tells me. \u201cThen stand and watch during the day by a piece of suitable cover, such as yellow irises. The males fight each other, and when they do, they flutter up into the air, scrabbling at each other. The have got very sharp claws, and they are fighting over a female.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

<\/div>
\n

MACHAIR, A RARE GRASSLAND HABITAT <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Machair is usually described as grassland growing on lime-rich shell sand and it is unique to north-west Scotland and Ireland. Some experts say it\u2019s really defined by the traditional rotational farming (or crofting) system in these areas, that includes both pasture for livestock and growing of crops, such as barley. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Species found on machair: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 <\/strong>On Tiree, brown hares graze on the flower-rich grassland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2 <\/strong>Invertebrates, including great yellow bumblebees (pictured), are attracted to the nectar-rich grasslands of the machair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3 <\/strong>Many breeding waders nest on machair. Lapwings (pictured) particularly love it, but redshanks, oystercatchers and snipe are all abundant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4 <\/strong>Machair is typified by high plant diversity. Earlier flowering species include yellow primroses, meadow buttercups and, later, bird\u2019s-foot trefoil and kidney vetch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5 <\/strong>Machair can be rich in orchids, including early marsh, Hebridean spotted and frog orchids (pictured). <\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n

UNCOVERING THE MYSTERY <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

Until Green started radio-tagging corncrakes, we knew next to nothing about them. Now we understand how British corncrakes migrate to the Congo Basin via West Africa (unlike many continental corncrakes, which overwinter further to the south and east) and also how they behave when they are here, but it\u2019s taken months of fieldwork and a lot of ingenuity to discover this much. <\/p>\n\n

Green describes how he used to tag the females and then try to find their nests for his research. By triangulating the signals from the tags, he would work out exactly where they were and he realised that, for 10 minutes every hour or so, they leave the nest to feed. Green used that small window to move in to inspect it. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unbelievably difficult to find them,\u201d he says in obvious admiration. \u201cThey are dug down into the ground and they choose the thickest pieces of vegetation.\u201d During one study, it took him three separate attempts to locate the nest. \u201cI hadn\u2019t got the place wrong, I knew where it was within one metre, but I still couldn\u2019t find it,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

To understand what has caused their precipitous decline, we must go back to a research paper written in 1944 by an ornithologist called Tony Norris. Norris showed, through correspondence with people throughout Britain (\u201cmainly vicars\u201d, says Green), that corncrakes started disappearing from the south-east of Britain in the 1880s and 90s and that it coincided almost perfectly with the introduction of mechanised mowing machines. Norris worked out that not only were the mowing machines killing chicks as they cut the grass for hay, farmers were using them earlier in the year, depriving corncrakes of the time they needed to fledge their chicks or have second broods. <\/p>\n\n

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Juvenile corncrakes leave the nest and start to follow their mother at only a couple of days old. Chicks become independent after only two weeks, enabling females to have second and sometimes third broods <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
ROAD TO RECOVERY? <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

Slowly, but surely, the bird disappeared, until they were only left in those parts of the country where farmers had not advanced the grasscutting dates as much as elsewhere. This was particularly true in the machair grasslands of islands such as Tiree and much of the Outer Hebrides, because farmers allow it to grow long for hay or silage, and it provides perfect cover for corncrakes. But still, until the implementation of a subsidy system in the 1990s, corncrakes continued to decline, even in the machairs. Then, farmers were paid to hold off cutting their grass, thus giving the females more time to raise their chicks and even have a second brood. <\/p>\n\n

This isn\u2019t working perfectly, Green warns, because the Scottish Government has reduced the funding. He hopes the data he, John Bowler and other conservationists have collected over the years is sufficient proof that you can protect corncrakes if you do the right thing \u2013 and that subsidies will increase again. <\/p>\n\n

It might be a small, unremarkable bird that is rarely seen, but many writers over the centuries have heard its strange rasping call and it has filled them with a sense of wonder. What or who is this mysterious bird, they all seem to be saying; what is it doing here? Today, you must travel far to share that experience, but in the flower-filled machair of Tiree, Coll or the Outer Hebrides, you can still hear the corncrake call and travel back in time to when \u2013 in the words of John Clare \u2013 it was \u201cbut a summer noise among the meadow hay\u201d. <\/p>\n\n

<\/div>
\n
Listen! <\/strong><\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

James Fair heads into the wilds of Tiree in search of the corncrake in episode 172 of the BBC <\/em>Countryfile <\/em>Magazine <\/em>Plodcast.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

James Fair<\/strong> is a journalist with a passion for wildlife and the environment. <\/p>\n\n

He specialises in investigating political, controversial issues such as badger culling and the links between grouse shooting and persecution of birds of prey.<\/p>\n\n

<\/div>
\n

WHERE TO SEE CORNCRAKES <\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

TIREE, INNER HEBRIDES <\/strong>
This is the corncrake\u2019s British stronghold, with around 300 calling males found throughout the island. The pastures between Balemartine and Balephuil in the south are recommended. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

COLL, INNER HEBRIDES <\/strong>
Listen for the bird at Coll RSPB Nature Reserve, which is towards the south-west of the island. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

NORTH UIST, OUTER HEBRIDES <\/strong>
Balranald RSPB Nature Reserve, on the west coast, is managed using traditional crofting techniques, and the small fields around the visitor centre attract corncrakes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ISLE OF SKYE <\/strong>
The RSPB advises that areas around Trotternish and Waternish are best for hearing corncrakes, though the population on the island is still quite fragile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

WELNEY WWT, NORFOLK <\/strong>
A captive-breeding and reintroduction programme managed by Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and Pensthorpe Conservation Trust is having some success. At least six males were recorded at Welney in 2022. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n

Photos: Naturepl.com, RSPB Images, Alamy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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