Wicken Fen celebrates first successful fledging of crane chick in hundreds of years
Wicken Fen is celebrating the first crane chick to fledge successfully in its 125-year history.
A pair of cranes - Britain’s tallest birds at 4ft (1.2m) tall - began nesting on what is the National Trust’s oldest reserve six years ago.
And when they began breeding in 2019 and had a chick, it was believed to be the first time that had happened in the area for 400 to 500 years, after hunting and the draining of marshland wiped them out.
However, while their eggs have typically hatched, it was not until this summer that the pair successfully reared a chick.
“Crane chicks are not capable of flight until they reach 10 or 11 weeks old,” says Wicken Fen’s countryside manager Alan Kell. “It is when they can fly that we class them as fledged. After half a decade, we now have proof that a crane hatched on Wicken Fen has fledged.”
Cranes are particularly elusive during their breeding season, nesting in remote, wet areas, protected from predators and well away from public paths.
Norman Sills, a crane expert, is able to recognise all the fenland breeding crane pairs by sight thanks to subtle differences in their appearance, such as how dark or light their bustles are.
He spotted the Wicken Fen pair with their flying chick on the Ouse Washes, near Welney, where cranes often congregate from August onwards.
Ajay Tegala, who works at Wicken Fen and lives near Welney, said: “For the last few years, the Wicken Fen team have been rooting for the cranes to successfully rear a youngster. When Norman spotted the Wicken Fen pair with a juvenile 12 miles away, we finally knew for sure they’d done it.”
But getting a photograph of the family was to prove difficult.
“Despite being such tall birds, they can be very hard to spot. Cranes are sensitive to disturbance, so seek out remote, safe places,” said Ajay. “After several hours of searching and many miles of walking, I managed to get a blurry photograph on my phone through a telescope, from a safe distance. But it was such an exciting and rewarding moment.”
Alan added: “It is thanks to the National Trust’s habitat restoration work across the wider Wicken Fen, that cranes returned here and have been able to breed successfully. And it is a network of similar projects that enables East Anglia to support a growing population of these elegant birds year-round.”
Lizzie Bruce, site manager at WWT Welney, said: “It is vital that conservation organisations work together to both look after our precious wetlands and create more spaces for rare wildlife. We recently had 22 cranes, including eight juveniles, making use of our restored wetland on Lady Fen.
“Seeing cranes at Welney, and the Ouse Washes, which have fledged from Wicken Fen and other sites in the Fens, shows how important it is that a network of suitable habitats is available for them.”
Reintroduction projects, careful protection and landscape-scale habitat restoration have helped bolster the UK population of cranes in recent years.
The RSPB puts the number of breeding pairs in the UK at 31, with about 40 passing through on passage in spring and autumn and about 175 cranes spending their winters in the UK.
