9 for 90: Crane

by Nick Acheson
I well remember first hearing that cranes lived and bred in Norfolk. I was a schoolboy naturalist in the 1980s, a devourer of books on birds and wildlife, and I knew from my reading that cranes neither lived nor bred in the UK. A school friend, whose family farmed in the Upper Thurne, mentioned in passing that he saw cranes on their land. In my recollection of the event I was quizzical; in reality I probably poured scorn. Cranes, after all, were not to be found here. So my friend produced a photo of cranes flying over the family farm. I rushed, incredulous, to my biology teacher who was nurturing me as a young birdwatcher. Yes, a tiny population of cranes, he told me, now bred in the Upper Thurne.

Three cranes February 1980, photo by John Buxton

This ornithological miracle, the return of the nation’s tallest and most statuesque breeding bird, had happened in secrecy. There are few places in the UK where you could hide a breeding pair of giant birds with a call which famously can be heard at a distance of three miles. The one in which the birds chose to hide, and in which to be hidden by dedicated conservationists, was the Horsey Estate in what today Norfolk Wildlife Trust calls the Upper Thurne Living Landscape area. Having first been seen at Hickling by NWT’s reserve warden on 13 September 1979 the original pair moved to Horsey, to the private estate run by the late John Buxton, and here they were joined by a third bird, a satellite male.

The birds could not have chosen their host more wisely: for until his recent death John nurtured Norfolk’s cranes – the UK’s first breeding cranes in 400 years – and in the early years kept their existence in his marshes a fiercely-guarded secret. It is thanks to him, more than any other, that the thrilling bugling of the crane is to be heard across Broadland, and elsewhere in East Anglia, each spring today.

How then had this magnificent bird disappeared from Norfolk and the UK? The crane, formally the common crane, was lost as a breeding bird in the UK, indeed it was lost as anything other than a very scarce bird of passage, due to the twin – and all too familiar – evils of habitat destruction and persecution. The crane is a bird of remote, extensive wetlands and in the UK these have been drained to the point of non-existence. This however largely happened after the disappearance of the crane, probably as early as 1600, and it seems likely that the cause of the species’ extinction on our island was hunting for food. Certainly there exist ample historical records of cranes, in numbers, appearing as delicacies at mediaeval banquets.

The crane is an ideal species with which to begin our 9 for 90: nine species which we will cover this year in celebration of Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s 90th anniversary. Together they are ambassadors for our work carefully restoring fragile and threatened habitats across eight Living Landscape project areas with one highlighting the importance of urban wildlife and the role we can all play to protect wildlife.

The crane is a perfect symbol for our vision for a habitat network, A Living Landscape, because it flourishes only in coherent stretches of wild habitat, because like Living Landscape project areas, it is spreading across the UK, and because it has been helped back from national extinction by the commitment of conservation charities like NWT but also by local communities.

Crane, photo by Julian Thomas

So the crane is our chosen species for Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Upper Thurne Living Landscape area, one of eight areas of the county in which we are working to deliver the specific aims of our national vision. After the appearance of the first three birds in 1979, and their round-Britain tour in spring 1980, they re-settled at Horsey and in 1981 the bonded pair attempted to breed. The only chick to hatch was lost to a predator; but in 1982 the same pair bred and raised a male chick, the first wild crane to hatch in the UK in four centuries. These remarkable early days of the crane’s return, plus the following two decades are recorded in great detail in The Norfolk Cranes’ Story by John Buxton and Chris Durdin.

John and Chris record the painfully slow return of the crane, nest by closely-followed nest, through the eighties and nineties until the present. Today a winter flock of up to 50 cranes is to be seen in the Norfolk Broads, principally in the Upper Thurne Living Landscape area. As a breeding bird the crane has spread to the Bure Valley Living Landscape area and further afield in East Anglia, including the RSPB’s superb recreated wetland at Lakenheath in the Fens.

Elsewhere in the UK the Great Crane Project has released dozens of carefully schooled cranes, raised in captivity from wild German nests, on the Somerset Levels, though some of these birds have chosen to return to Slimbridge in Gloucestershire where they were raised. These released birds have now begun to breed too.

There are few places in the UK where you could hide a breeding pair of giant birds with a call which famously can be heard at a distance of three miles

Nick Acheson
With a great deal of help from people, the crane is once again, egg by egg, chick by toffee-coloured chick, recolonising the UK. For us at Norfolk Wildlife Trust, however, it remains a flagship bird of the Upper Thurne Living Landscape area, where it is still one of the most treasured, charismatic species.

This winter, from Stubb Mill at NWT Hickling Broad, it is possible to watch dozens of cranes coming to roost in the fields of rush and sedge of the Upper Thurne. In March it will again be possible to hear the vibrant, throaty calls of this spectacular bird, as pairs declare their intention to breed. In May or June, with great luck, you might see a furtive pair with a tawny chick at heel feeding in a grazing marsh as you visit Hickling in search of swallowtails, Norfolk hawkers and fen flowers. And from a summer boat trip on Hickling Broad you might see a squadron of these great-winged birds crossing the vast sky of Broadland.

The bird that came back, the bird that bugled again in Norfolk’s marshes, still one of the scarcest nesting birds in the country: the crane a wildlife success story for Norfolk.