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Corncrakes spend the winter in central Africa and migrate to Britain and Europe for summer where they inhabit areas of long grass and haymeadows. However, the introduction of mechanized grass cutting led to the wholesale destruction of Corncrake nests and the young birds inside them. Throughout the last century, this revolution in grass cutting effectively restricted populations of Corncrakes to pockets on the Western Isles of Scotland.
In 2001, a joint project involving Natural England, the RSPB, the Zoological Society of London and Pensthorpe Conservation Trust was established to reintroduce Corncrakes back into England at the RSPB's Nene Washes nature reserve in Cambridgeshire. This year there are 12 male Corncrakes, with their distinctive rasping "crex-crex" call, at this site. Fantastic news!
The project sees Corncrake chicks being bred at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo and reintroduced to the Nene Washes, 60 miles away. Corncrakes are migrants and it's important that these chicks remember the Nene Washes as their "home" so the birds are kept in the dark until they get to the nature reserve. At this point they "learn" where to return to each year based on the appearance of the sky at night, the movement of the stars around the pole star and the characteristics of the magnetic field. All this information creates an internal map for the Corncrakes so that they can return to the same location every year.