cranes

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. 

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.

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

This year, 46 of the cranes released between 2010 and 2014 paired up into 23 pairs, 21 of which went on to make breeding attempts across the South West of the UK.  This is the highest annual number of breeding pairs to date - and a result of all the released birds now being at breeding age and able to get on with the important business of reproducing! 

Some sad news I'm afraid.

The young crane that was caught and colour ringed White Black Green on 26th July, and nicknamed 'Timitoo' has been found dead.

It was quickly back with its parents, Timmy and Michaela, and was captured on a trail camera at dawn on 28th July and then again on 29th.  See below...

 Timitoo captured on trail-cam 28th July closely followed by...