Breeding hopes high for common crane

The adult bird iscommuting between fieldsand a pond at Bewholme Hall to Hornsea Mere, where it is roosting on an island.

The crane is likely to have come here from Europewhere the population migrates in spring and autumn – a few pass through Britain at these times.

The Holderness area seems to have attracted two or three cranes for several years now, particularly in late summer when the crops have been harvested and the stubble is rich in invertebrate food.

Hopes are high that Britain's small population of cranes will eventually become more widespread again.

They once bred on many wetlands but overhunting to supply medieval banquets, such as the one in 1465 to celebrate the enthronement of George Neville as Archbishop of York where 200 cranes were among the 14,000 wild birds consumed, combined with the drainage of wetlands brought them to extinction here by the 1600s.

In 1979, a small population became established again in the Norfolk Broads and has reached up to 30 individuals with successful breeding.

Two pairs bred last year at the RSPB's Lakenheath Fen Nature Reserve, the first time that more than a single pair has bred outside Norfolk while one of these pairs has also produced two young this year. A single pair has been present each year in South Yorkshire since 2001 and have hatched and fledged several young.

But this month an ambitious reintroduction project for cranes on the Somerset Levels, where a pair of little bitterns has bred this year, reaches a critical stage when 21 young birds are finally released into the wild.

The Great Crane Project, a partnership between the RSPB, Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and Pensthorpe Trust imported 21 crane eggs from Germany which were hatched at the trust's Slimbridge reserve.

The 10-week old chicks were taken to Somerset and kept in a fox-proof enclosure while they were taught the dangers from this predator. A Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, a hunting dog that looks like a fox, was introduced into the enclosure while the alarm calls of adult cranes were played. Hopefully, these measures will prove adequate preparation for the young cranes in the wild – they have also been fitted with electronic transmitters to monitor their movements.

More eggs are to be imported next year and the process repeated so that by 2015, 100 cranes will have been released and, hopefully, some will have started to breed. The project, funded by a 700,000 grant from the Viridor Credits Environment Company, follows a successful project to reintroduce whooping cranes to the wild in the United States.

Birdwatchers were arriving in Flamborough in large numbers this week to see an eastern olivaceous warbler first found on Wednesday in Old Fall Hedge and still present the following day.

Other migrants have been on the move along the coast among them three barred warblers and aprobable first-wintercollared flycatchercaught and ringed at the Warren at Spurn, wryneck at Sammy's Point and a barred and Icterine warbler at Flamborough. A wryneck was trapped and ringed inland at Wintersett Reservoir. Balearic and sooty shearwaters were seen off Flamborough and a juvenile Sabine's gull off Spurn.

Five long-tailed skuas were seen off Filey and one off Spurn.

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CW 4/9/10