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Portrait of Corncrake

Nature · Birds

Corncrake

Summer visitor · 27–30 cm

Crex crex — Rallidae (rails and crakes)

A secretive rail of hay meadows, once common enough across Britain and Ireland that its rasping call was a sound of every summer night. Mechanised early mowing of grass for silage destroyed nests and chicks and drove it out of nearly all of mainland Britain, and it now survives chiefly in the Hebrides and Orkney. Its onomatopoeic scientific name, Crex crex, is the call itself.

How to spot them

  • ▸A dry, rasping double note repeated endlessly through the night from long grass, like a comb drawn across a matchbox
  • ▸Scientific name that is also the call: Crex crex
  • ▸Bright chestnut wing panels flashing as it flies weakly with legs dangling
  • ▸Buff-brown and streaked, with a blue-grey face and breast on the male, and a short pinkish bill, not a water rail's long red one
  • ▸Heard far more often than seen; creeps through hay with a hunched, high-stepping walk

How to know it

A dry mechanical double rasp, like a comb scraped with a thumbnail, repeated all night from long grass

The corncrake's call, which gives it the scientific name Crex crex.

Flies low and weakly with dangling legs, showing bright chestnut panels in the wing

Corncrake in flight — the chestnut wings separate it from water rail and quail.

Driven from almost all mainland Britain by early silage mowing; now survives mainly on Coll, Tiree, the Uists and Orkney

The corncrake's decline; the RSPB's Corncrake Calling project works with crofters on late, centre-out mowing.

Counted each summer as calling males; Scotland recorded 870 in 2023, up from 828 the year before

Corncrake — RSPB Scotland annual survey.

A rail that lives in tall grass rather than water, and winters in central and southern Africa

Corncrake — a long-distance migrant rail.

Red-listed and on Schedule 1, its older English names include 'daker hen' and 'land rail'

Corncrake — Crex crex.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Scientific name Crex crex is onomatopoeic, imitating the rasping call; older English names include 'land rail' and 'daker hen'
  • •Scotland recorded 870 calling males in 2023, up from 828 in 2022 and the first rise in five years, but well below the 2014 peak of about 1,290 (RSPB Scotland)
  • •BTO BirdFacts carries an older UK estimate of 1,100 calling males (2013–17 five-year mean)
  • •Red-listed in Birds of Conservation Concern 5 (2021), and on Schedule 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981
  • •The decline was caused by mowing hay and silage earlier and faster than the birds could raise broods; corncrake-friendly mowing means cutting late and from the centre outwards so chicks can escape into cover
  • •It is a rail, not a gamebird: it lives in tall grass rather than water, and winters in central and southern Africa
  • •A reintroduction attempt at the Nene Washes in Cambridgeshire ran from 2003 but failed to establish a self-sustaining population
  • •The UK range contracted by about 75% between the 1968–72 and 2008–11 breeding atlases
  • •The male calls mostly between about 11pm and 3am, and may repeat the rasp many thousands of times a night

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources