Corncrake numbers triple in three years at WWT Welney thanks to reintroduction scheme

The number of calling corncrakes at WWT Welney has tripled in three years after the wetland centre became a release site for a reintroduction scheme.

This small bird was once found across much of the UK but is now lost virtually everywhere except the western islands of Scotland.

Their catastrophic decline has been put down to a mixture of changes in agricultural practices and wetland loss since the mid-20th century.

In 2021, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT), a wetland restoration charity, was invited to host a new release site at its Welney reserve, just over the Cambridgeshire border in Norfolk, as part of a reintroduction project that also involves Pensthorpe Conservation Trust,

Natural England, the Zoological Society of London and the RSPB.

The numbers of male corncrakes recorded calling their piercing crex crex call on the site has risen from just three males in 2021 to at least nine in 2024, with a similar number of female birds likely to also be present.

It means these birds have survived in the wild, completed an epic migration to sub-Saharan Africa and back, then returned to the exact site where they were first released.

Emilie Fox-Teece, conservation breeding and monitoring officer, said: “Having gone more or less extinct from England in the 1960s it’s amazing to hear corncrakes back on the Ouse Washes where they belong.

“Corncrakes rely on wet grassland to breed and raise their young, and this project is the perfect example of how using headstarting and habitat management together can restore lost wonders to our wetlands.”

The project involves keeping a close on captive corncrake chicks that hatch at Pensthorpe in Norfolk, where their health is checked and they ringed at about 14 or 15 days old, before they are transported to pre-release pens at Welney, where they stay for a further three weeks. They are caught in the pre-release pens between 35 and 40 days old, health checked again and re-ringed before being released onto the reserve, where there is a habitat rich in food for them to spend the summer, before they migrate to the Congo basin, mostly at night.

WWT has released 300 birds into the wild since 2021 to boost the population. The numbers recorded returning remain relatively low but they are on the rise and WWT says a population of 30 to 50 pairs would be likely to sustain itself.

If the numbers continue to rise through reintroduction, corncrakes could potentially begin to repopulate the area themselves, assuming the wet grassland habitats they rely on as breeding grounds are properly managed.

The tiny, ground-nesting birds live on average for only two years. As a survival tactic, they lay large clutches of chicks - up to eight - and males are known to mate with multiple females each season.