This month we’re shining the spotlight on one of our rarest, most secretive birds - the corncrake. Here Jess Barrett from RSPB Scotland introduces these birds which pose one of the UK’s greatest conservation challenges.
Many of you will be familiar with the sight and sound of coots and moorhens paddling about on canals, ponds and rivers. I love the slightly comical look they have when out of water with their overly large feet and they both certainly have rather loud calls! Who you might be less well acquainted with is their rather shy land dwelling migrant relative the corncrake. Yet 200 years ago these birds were one of the most distinctive sounds of summer.
Nowadays chances are that very few of us will see a corncrake. As well as being incredible secretive birds, spending most of their time out of sight in tall grass and rough vegetation looking for the earthworms, beetles, slugs and snails they feed on, they’re only found in a few places here in the UK, mostly in Scottish islands and the far north-west coast. They’re also only here for around half the year between April and October, making the long journey from their winter home in Africa to breed during our summer months.
Corncrakes’ saucer sized nests are built on the ground in areas of dense vegetation - fields provide a favoured spot for this. Between eight and 12 eggs are laid, normally in early May, which hatch after 16 to 19 days. The black fluffy chicks leave the nest when they are only a few days old and follow their mother about. She’ll build them a second nest where they roost before leaving the chicks to them fend for themselves at around 12 days old. This is before they can even fly which they won’t master for another three weeks! This gives the mother time to lay and raise a second clutch of chicks before beginning her migration south in the autumn.
Two families a year may seem excessive but every chick counts for corncrakes. These birds tend to live for just one year, with only about twenty per cent of corncrakes surviving from one spring to the next so these big broods are really important.
As mentioned what corncrakes are most famous for is their distinctive rasping call made by the singing males. Once heard it’s not forgotten! This “crex crex” noise gives the corncrake its Latin name and has been likened to drawing a comb across a matchbox. Have listen here and see what you think it sounds like. The call of the corncrake can be heard any time of day but around dusk and during the night in June and early July is when they’re most vocal.
Photo: Corncrake, by Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
Many people have been inspired by this unusual call. The nineteenth century poet John Clare was dedicates his poem “The Landrail” (another name for corncrakes) to the elusive bird and its call that haunts all those who hear it:
A mystery still to men and boysWho know not where they layAnd guess it but a summer noiseAmong the meadow hay
Even when Clare was writing in the early nineteenth century you were far more likely to hear a corncrake calling then catch a glimpse of one. It was, and still is, a lucky few who see one of these yellow-brown birds, slightly smaller than a moorhen, with dark streaks along its back and grey face.
While corncrakes were widespread across the UK at the time Clare, who grew up in the Northamptonshire countryside, was composing his poem their fortunes were soon to change. The population began declining from the mid nineteenth century as agricultural systems became more mechanised and hay was cut earlier taking away their favoured habitat and often destroying nests in the process. By the 1930s they had disappeared from much of England, south Wales and many parts of Scotland.
Further changes to agricultural practices in the 1950s had a catastrophic impact the remaining number of corncrakes and in 1993 only 480 calling males were recorded at a few isolated pockets in Scotland. Most of the areas the corncrake population clung on are in crofting communities. This is a unique social system in the Scottish Highlands and islands that stems from the historic Highland Clearances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Crofting is a way of life that is intrinsically linked to the land where a croft, a small agricultural land holding, is run by a crofter with a focus on small scale food production.
By the 1990s corncrakes had become so rare that if the rate of decline had continued these birds would have disappeared completely from here within 10 to 20 years.
Yet, from this terrible situation, hope for these birds emerged with new research, government support, and crucially partnership working between conservationists and farmers and crofters. It’s an ongoing effort and during August we’ll be running a series of blogs so you can discover more about RSPB Scotland’s work to turn around the fortunes for corncrakes. Keep an eye out for these, and find out more about the species in RSPB’s August podcast here.