06/09/26 - Final five

Last week saw our final five Corncrake chicks of the year released onto the reserve, in what has been a successful second year of our reintroduction project, bringing the total number of Corncrakes released onto the NNR this year to 148 (and an overall total of 222 across both years to date) – all released on a range of sites across the Ings. Recently we also enjoyed welcoming Paul Murphy from BBC Look North to the Lower Derwent Valley to film one of our releases, which you may have seen last week on the local and national BBC news, as well as featuring on BBC Radio York and Radio 4’s Farming Today programme. 

Whilst it has been a lot of hard work and long hours since early March when our team started building additional pre-release pens, followed by overnight transfers of chicks from Norfolk, twice daily feeds, numerous ringing, tagging and releasing mornings, as well as late evening and early morning survey work to try and record last year’s returning birds, it really is a fantastic project to be involved with, and we're now hoping to get another good return rate next spring, with perhaps 15-20 singing males expected around the site if all goes well. The post-release monitoring that we have carried out over the last few weeks/months suggests everything is looking good so far, with birds behaving in line with what would be expected by wild bred Scottish birds, and we were delighted to get in the region of nine singing males from last year’s cohort returning. Next spring we will be reaching out once again and asking those who live in the local villages as well as local farmers/birdwatchers to listen out for and report any singing birds.

A huge thank you must go to everyone who has supported this project – from building the pens, transporting and feeding the chicks, ringing and tracking the birds, carrying out health checks and managing/maintaining the pens, and most importantly, to those who helped to fund the project through grants and our Aviva crowdfunding campaign – this project is a true partnership effort to help bring Corncrakes back to the English countryside once again.