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Hello Crane fans and Happy New Year to you!

Hello Crane fans

Hello Crane Fans

Great news to start the year with.  The 2021 breeding season resulted in 15 fledged juveniles joining our Somerset flock.  An excellent outcome and beyond expectations.  The  young cranes are still with their parents and observed regularly settling in to their environment.  Another first is that none of the originally released birds went missing last year.  That is certainly a relief.  The Annual Report is now uploaded to the website under the 'News' tab and you can read all the details there. 

Hello Crane Fans

Apologies to those of you who are wondering why no news has been posted for quite a long time.  Well, the breeding season is full of incident and has its ups and downs in terms of what’s happening.  Good news can be followed by less happy news and it can be quite a rollercoaster. So news is best broadcast when the situation is more settled.

All too often in nature conservation, stories are full of doom and gloom; highlighting species in steep decline. However, today is World Wetland Day and I thought it would be a great opportunity to celebrate a real conservation success story; the return of common cranes to the UK. Following the natural recolonisation of a few birds in 1979 and extensive conservation work, including a reintroduction programme, they are making a return after a 400-year absence. 2020 was a record year, with a total of 64 pairs present; of which, up to 56 attempted to breed and fledged 23 young.

Hello Craniacs

The breeding cranes in Somerset have had a very good year in 2019 and the seven fledged juveniles continue to thrive.  If you want to find out more you will find details available for each of the released birds on the crane profile pages. You can find the individual profiles by clicking on "Cranes > Meet the Cranes".  The information is correct up to the end of September.

The 2019 breeding season has been one of mixed fortunes for the reintroduced cranes, but the overall trend is one of continued improvement in productivity.  This was the best year yet in terms of numbers of cranes fledged with the figure of nine new recruits an excellent acheivement.  Productivity can be measured in a number of ways - and it is usual to either use the number of fledged chicks divided by either the number of territorial pairs, or the number of pairs that made nesting attempts.  Both of these two figures 0.38 and 0.56 chi

The 2018 breeding season is now over and there is very good news from West Sedgemoor.  Three pairs produced three youngsters now fledged and in the photograph you can see two of them in flight.  Additionally the pairs who have chosen to stay at Slimbridge have also produced 3 youngsters, now fledged.  It has been a very good year for breeding attempts though not all have been successful.  Hop