16/10/2026
🪶 Happy Friday!! 🏴 🪶🪶🏴
An exciting update on the 23 Common Cranes that were seen gliding past St Cyrus NNR on 3 October!
They were indeed birds from the Scottish breeding population, heading south towards their wintering grounds in continental Europe! WOW!
After around 400 years without a breeding population in Scotland, cranes returned to breed in 2012, and now these magnificent birds are once again gracing our skies, spreading their enormous wings and setting off on their autumn migration.
Citizen science at its very best! Alex Barr managed to capture some fantastic detail of the flock as it passed St Cyrus NNR, including one bird with missing flight feathers on its right wing. That little detail proved invaluable! Amanda Biggins, an RSPB volunteer who has been monitoring the main Scottish breeding site, recognised the distinctive bird and believes it to be one of the two juveniles from a family she knows as "Pair 4"!
Miranda counted 23 cranes coming into roost at the breeding site on 13 September, ‘The flock of 23 I counted included Pair 4 with twins, 10 & 1 juv, another unknown family of 3, probably Sherry & her mate Trifle, and 11 probable non-breeding / sub-adult birds (they don't breed until at least 3 years old)’. Then, between 3 and 5 October, reports began appearing on BirdGuides as the birds made their way south. The flock apparently split into two groups in the Borders, with four juveniles amongst them. By Monday, 12 had reached West Sussex (with two having left that group in Northamptonshire), while another nine had last been reported over Northumberland.’
I shared a link with Miranda to some wonderful footage captured by Bex Outrum as cranes passed the Isle of May. Amanda thought she might recognise another family of three, possibly "Pair 10", whose juvenile is already developing the distinctive black-and-white facial and neck markings of an adult.
She even suspects that Sherry, a colour-ringed crane originally from Somerset, may have been amongst the migrating birds (along with her mate Trifle!), although rings are difficult to spot in flight!
Amanda very kindly gave me a call to tell me more about these remarkable birds. As Scotland's breeding population has become established, their numbers have continued to grow, with between 9-11 active breeding pairs this season!
From an absence lasting centuries to a new generation of Scottish cranes taking to the skies. What an amazing conservation story! And how wonderful that the phones in our pockets can help reveal so much about the lives of the wildlife around us.
A huge thank you to Alex Barr, Ron MacDonald and Bex Outrum for their photos and to Amanda Biggins for all her amazing information and work on these birds 🙂
