Bird of the Month John Mcewen

The corncrake’s Latin name, Crex crex, echoes the rasping and insistent call of the males by day and especially night, most regularly in May and June.

‘It’s like this,’ my host primed me in Ayrshire 45 years ago, and he dragged his thumb along a comb. That June night, goaded by the call – a common reaction, I subsequently learned – I rose from my bed and followed it to its source in the valley. The nearer it seemed, the more baffling its location, until I was standing in an echo-chamber. I could have been surrounded by corncrakes. I returned to bed in the dawn confounded.

And still they hear the craiking sound And still they wonder why It surely can’t be underground Nor is it in the sky

John Clare, from ‘Landrail’ (a traditional name for the corncrake)

It is by the voice we know them. They skulk in cover and, even if seen, prefer to scurry than fly.

In this one of all fields I know the best All day and night, hoarse and

melodious, sounded A creeping corncrake, coloured like

the ground, Till the cat got him and gave the rough air rest. Norman Mccaig, from ‘A Voice of

Summer’

Their avoidance of flight is also deceptive. Corncrakes migrate from sub-saharan Africa, as far south as Madagascar. They have been found among the nocturnal kills of Bath’s streetlight-aided peregrines, witness to night-flying migration. The Bath evidence suggests there may be more corncrakes than experts think, but there is no denying a headlong decline. Lord Cockburn (1779–1854), judge (‘except that he murdered, Burke was a gentlemanly fellow’) and much else, heard them as a commonplace in the heart of Edinburgh’s New Town.

Numbers fell across Europe as machines replaced scythes and silage hay. Since my corncrake chase, the population has fallen by nearly threequarters (the UK has 1,000 breeding pairs), and in Ireland by ninety per cent. The only 21st-century record of a London sighting was at the Wetland Centre, Barnes, in 2010, with the bird quickly despatched by a heron.

Today, the most reliable places to hear Britain’s corncrakes are the Scottish islands and in County Donegal and west Connaught.

Coll is a particular stronghold, Tiree another. Bought by the RSPB in 1991, Coll’s grasslands are managed for corncrakes, with late-cut meadows and pasture left free from summer grazing. Protected areas, planted with cow parsley and nettles, provide early summer cover. Patches of yellow iris, such a feature of the Western Isles, are another haunt. Rspb/project Trust tours enable corncrake-seekers to visit over two weekends in May and June. State-funded conservation schemes encourage farmers to be corncrake-friendly on other islands: grass is left to stand until August; fields are mown from the centre and cover spared at edges.

Last year’s fine summer on Coll resulted in a record 89 calling males. In England, since 2002, corncrakes have been reintroduced to the Nene Washes, the RSPB’S reserve near Peterborough.