UK: The corncrake, a grassland-dwelling bird once on the brink of extinction in Britain, is making a strong comeback thanks to conservation efforts, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said yesterday. A survey this year recorded 1,067 corncrakes, up 28 per cent in just a year and significantly more than the paltry 470 found in 1993 when the species was deemed all but extinct.
"This year's increase suggests that the practices we have researched and developed over the years to encourage corncrakes are working extremely well," RSPB director in Scotland Stuart Housden said in a statement. But the fact remained that most of the migratory birds were confined to limited breeding areas in Scotland, with just a handful elsewhere in Britain.
Efforts to improve corncrake numbers in Ireland have included trying to retain protected breeding areas in the Shannon callows. The corncrake, one of 17 bird species breeding in Europe which are globally threatened in their range territories, winters in East Africa and returns to Europe in April or May. To make conservation efforts harder, the partridge-sized bird is hardly ever seen and is mainly monitored by the "crek-crek" call of the male.