Ingham’s W RLD
ANY day now one of the most annoying birds in Britain will start its relentless search for love. The corncrake, a brown and grey relative of the moorhen, will wing in from Africa and start singing its love song. I say song but it only knows one note which sounds like a pencil dragged across a comb. It can repeat the call 20,000 times a night, with the early hours its favourite time for wooing.
On its strongholds in the Outer Hebrides and Northern Ireland it works alongside the short summer nights to promote insomnia.
But this pest of the meadows is one of several species previously lost to the UK or heading for oblivion which have been reintroduced.
The corncrake was restored to its old haunts on the Nene Washes in Cambridgeshire in 2003 and, despite the perils of migration, in 2016 there were 20 singing males.
On the nearby Ouse washes a long-billed wader is hoping to cheat extinction here for a second time. Black-Tailed godwits vanished 200 years ago, returned in the 1930s, and are barely clinging on in the Fens. But last year 26 youngsters hatched and reared by the RSPB and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust were released, complete with coloured leg rings.
In February two were spotted in Portugal and they are now in France, edging closer to home.
One of the most successful reintroductions, says the British Trust for Ornithology, is the red kite. In Shakespeare’s day these birds of prey with the forked tail foraged on the streets of London. By the 1930s there was only one female left in rural Wales.
Since 1989 red kites from Spain have been reintroduced to areas from the Chilterns to northern Scotland. Numbers have soared to 1,600 pairs, a remarkable increase of 1,231 per cent, and they are becoming a familiar sight, tails twisting on their effortless glides.
White-tailed eagles were exterminated in Scotland by 1918 but from 1975 were reintroduced from Norway.
Now there are 200 pairs of these flying barn doors ranging over the Highlands and Islands – though not all sheep farmers are happy.
Ospreys vanished from England about 150 years ago but between 1996 and 2001 squadrons of Scottish young were reintroduced to Rutland Water by Anglian Water and the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust.
Last year eight pairs bred in Rutland, raising 16 chicks amid hopes their range will spread.
Man meddling with nature is always controversial. But as he is the reason most of these birds disappeared in the first place it is only right that he helps them reclaim their kingdoms. A LAST bastion for nature’s musical genius, the red-listed nightingale, is at risk again. The RSPB says Lodge Hill in Kent is a Site of Special Scientific Interest because every summer it hosts about 85 singing male nightingales. Yet after a development reprieve last year, Medway Council has just earmarked land on and around Lodge Hill for 3,000 homes. Buffoons. A GIANT whale is the jazz singer of the deep. Ninety-ton Bowheads in the high Arctic sang 184 different songs over three years – and just kept improvising. Kathleen Stafford of the University of Washington tells a Royal Society journal: “If humpback whale song is like classical music, bowheads are jazz. The sound is more free form.” GREEN TIP: Put cardboard egg cartons on your compost heap to aerate it and soak up excess moisture. A four-eyed lizard stalked Wyoming 48 million years ago, scientists tell Current Biology. The extinct monitor lizard had two normal eyes plus another two on top of its head. These “eye-like” structures were light sensitive and kept its body clock ticking along. PET owners can help keep medicines effective, says the Government’s chief veterinary officer Christine Middlemiss. Pet owners often expect vets to prescribe antibiotics despite the spread of antibiotic resistance. Dr Middlemiss said: “Antibiotics are not always the best treatment. If that’s what your vet says – trust your vet.” THE King of Fish could become endangered in your lifetime, says the Atlantic Salmon Trust. The wild salmon population has plunged 70 per cent in 25 years – and no one knows why. The AST has launched a £1million study “before it’s too late”. Scientists are tagging young fish as they head out into Scotland’s Moray Firth, gateway for 20 per cent of the UK’s salmon. They want to find out where the salmon are most at risk: in our rivers or at sea. Prime suspects are predators, farm pollution, man-made barriers on the birth rivers where the salmon return to spawn or the impact of fish farming.