BASIC PRINCIPLES

Common Crane may be an increasingly familiar sight in Britain, but it is still unusual and spectacular enough to stop anyone in their tracks. No longer confined to its traditional Norfolk stronghold, the species has spread to several other areas and potentially can be encountered almost anywhere outside the breeding season. The same can’t be said for Demoiselle and Sandhill Cranes, both red-letter day vagrants with differing status on the British list, but autumn has brought both to our shores in the past and history has a tendency to repeat itself.

Over the years I have seen all of these species in Britain, as well as an escaped Sarus Crane in Cambridgeshire back in the 1970s. Escaped cranes may be exceptional, but it’s worth being aware of such extreme possibilities if any field characters of a bird you see don’t fit the three contenders in question.

Common Crane

The most widely distributed member of its family,

Common Crane breeds from north-west Europe across the northern half of the Continent and eastwards to the Far East and north-east China (Keller et al 2020). It is treated as monotypic by the IOC, but an outlying Western Palearctic population, occurring only in Turkey, Georgia and Armenia, lacks the distinctive red on the hind crown and has been separated as archibaldi.

In historical times it was a common species in Britain, but by the 16th century had become extirpated in much of western Europe. Numbers began to recover in the mid-20th century (Biggins and Maggs 2021), though it remained rare in Britain and was classified as a rarity until as recently as 1987.

Eight years previously, in September 1979, two appeared in the Norfolk Broads, to be joined by a third the following month (Taylor et al 1999). The original pair settled and eventually bred in 1981, hatching a chick which was predated at about a month old, but then fledged a single chick the following year – thought to be the first successful breeding in the UK in more than 400 years (Stanbury et al 2011). Speculation that they may have been of captive origin seems unfounded, given many records of the species in Britain in the preceding four years and the fact that their arrival in 1979 coincided with other sightings that autumn (Stanbury 2011).

Colonisation was initially very slow, with three breeding pairs in 1992 and four in 1997, but by 2010 there were eight or nine pairs (Stanbury 2011). Several pairs also colonised Yorkshire and the East Anglian Fens after 2000, and breeding may have taken place in Caithness in 1997 (Biggins and Maggs 2021).

The most recent estimate for the UK breeding population is 42-46 pairs in 2018, a massive 1,375% increase over the past 25 years (Eaton et al 2020).

This is in no small part due to a successful reintroduction programme in south-west England, with 18 pairs and another two in Wales coming from the same source (Eaton et al 2020). The original Norfolk population has consolidated with up to 12 pairs, and another six are now in neighbouring Cambridgeshire. In total, the UK population is spread across 24 sites in 10 counties, the most northerly birds being in north-east Scotland (Eaton et al 2020).

As the breeding population increases, so too does the possibility of encountering the species elsewhere. Wandering resident, summering or reintroduced birds occur widely, and migrants from the Continent are also possible, especially in autumn – on 15 October 2019 a juvenile I saw migrating south over London had a ring from a Finnish scheme. The presence of any colour rings on birds seen well or photographed may help to establish movements of birds from the reintroduction scheme.

In Ireland, the species is a scarce vagrant or winter visitor, with 208 records mostly from southern counties (Hobbs 2021). However, a pair reportedly nested on a rewetted peat bog in the republic’s midlands in summer 2021 (Pitches 2021) – their third attempt, and if successful the first pair to do so in Ireland for more than 300 years.

Demoiselle Crane

A predominantly Asian species, Demoiselle Crane breeds in steppe and semidesert habitats from southern Ukraine eastwards to northeast China. In the Western Palearctic it has two separate breeding areas: in Crimea and the adjacent north coast of the Sea of Azov, and more extensively from south-east European Russia eastwards through north-west Kazakhstan (Keller 2020).

A declining species, it also bred in Turkey until relatively recently, with the breeding population dwindling to an estimated 10-20 pairs by the beginning of this century (Eken et al 2003 in Kirwan et al 2008). It formerly also bred in Morocco, but has not been recorded there since the late 1980s, and there are European breeding records from Italy (Lampedusa Island) and Romania (Mitchell 2017).

With its reduced Western Palearctic breeding range not easily accessible, most encounters with the species in the region are likely to happen in spring or autumn. It is still regular on passage in Cyprus and the Caucasus; migrants also occur in Lebanon and Israel, but the species is rarer there.

Extralimital occurrences from elsewhere in Europe are widespread, and there are accepted records from as far west as Spain, Portugal, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway (Mitchell 2017). However, known or presumed escapes cloud the pattern of occurrences, and this is certainly the case in Britain, where there are no accepted records.

The best-known British individual is the adult that arrived exhausted at Spurn, East Yorks, on 13 September 1993. It was heavily twitched during its 10-day stay and by 8 October it had reached Essex, eventually becoming

very approachable and taking maggots from fishermen. Consequently it was consigned to Category E – perhaps unfairly given that the species is routinely hand-fed in parts of its winter range in India. Other records have also failed to make the grade, but are perhaps due a review.

Sandhill Crane

Breeding in northern North America and north-east Siberia, this species is an extreme vagrant by any

measure. Paradoxically, it is also on numerous national lists in Europe by virtue of a very small number of individuals, some of which

have attached themselves to migrating and wintering flocks of Common Cranes, and then moved across the Continent.

There are just four British records, the last being the famous 2011 bird which first appeared in north-east Scotland in late September, and then added itself to multiple county lists as it moved south along the east coast over subsequent days, finally settling in Suffolk from 2-7 October (Hudson et al 2012). Several European records have been attributed to the subspecies canadensis, the form known as Lesser Sandhill Crane (Mitchell 2017). ■