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By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent
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The corncrake, a shy bird once widespread across the British Isles, is poised to set a tentative foot on the road to recovery.
Almost ready for the wild (Image: Chris Gomersall)
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Modern intensive farming has left corncrakes restricted largely to north and west Scotland.
But the first brood of chicks hatched by a conservation project is almost ready for release.
The corncrake is the only globally threatened bird to nest in the UK.
The chicks' proud human foster parents are the members of the Corncrake Project.
They are the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Whipsnade Wild Animal Park (run by ZSL), and English Nature, the UK Government's wildlife advisers.
The project aims to re-establish the corncrake, once famed for its croaking call, as a species nesting regularly in England.
Grahame Madge of the RSPB told BBC News Online: "About 150 years ago, you'd have found corncrakes in just about every parish with suitable habitat across the British Isles.
"They'd certainly have been in every county.
Breeding against the clock
"They like to live and breed in thick grassland vegetation. When farmers cut that just once a year, they left time for the corncrakes to rear a brood.
"But with up to three cuts a year nowadays for silage, the birds don't have a chance.
Making a belated comeback: The corncrake
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"So you mainly find them in places like Orkney and the Hebrides, where crofting, which is less intensive than most farming methods, means the grass is there long enough for them to breed."
Corncrakes spend the winter in sub-Saharan Africa and return to the UK in the spring.
They are hard to spot, because their brown plumage camouflages them so well. But the males give themselves away with their loud rasping courting cry.
Undercover operation
Females usually lay from eight to 12 eggs: the clutch which has hatched at Whipsnade is the first of about a dozen laid earlier by adult corncrakes kept there for breeding.
The chicks will be released at a secret location somewhere in England.
Phil Grice of English Nature said: "Once the birds have been re-introduced, we hope to see the young corncrakes establish themselves at this site.
"We look forward to the day when the calling of this globally-threatened species is once again a familiar sound in at least one part of the English countryside."
Adult corncrake images by Andy Hay
One-Minute World News
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