Common Crane breeding success at Lakenheath Fen RSPB

Posted on: 23 Aug 2016

For the second year running, two pairs of Common Cranes have successfully raised three chicks between them on a Suffolk RSPB reserve.

Common Crane is one of Britain's rarest breeding birds and with only around 25 pairs nesting in the country each year. Common Crane had been extirpated in Britain since the 1600s due to hunting and loss of habitat. They recolonised the Norfolk Broads in the 1970s and have gradually started breeding elsewhere in the country.

Two pairs of cranes arrived at Lakenheath Fen in 2007 and have nested on the reserve every year since then. In 2009, one of these pairs fledged the first chick to reach that stage in the Fens for over 400 years. Since then, the two pairs of cranes at Lakenheath Fen had reared a total of eight chicks until this year. Common Cranes live an average of 20-25 years, and find a mate and start to breed at between three and five years of age.

Staff and volunteers at Lakenheath Fen RSPB on the border of Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, are over the moon that this scarce species, which is very shy and secretive during the breeding season, has had this success in front of an audience of commuters on the Abellio Greater Anglia train route between Norwich and Ely.


Continued