Spotting the Common Crane in the UK at Nene Washes

By Carol Leather

The Common Crane (Grus grus) is the tallest bird in Britain, and its bugling call carries across open country like a sound from much further back in time.

It nearly didn't make it back at all. Cranes were extinct as a breeding bird here for almost 400 years. The population is recovering now, slowly, on the back of habitat restoration and steady conservation work in wetlands like the Cambridgeshire Fens.

RSPB Nene Washes is one of the better places to watch them. I've had a few autumn encounters there I won't forget.

An Unexpected Family Encounter

My first sighting here was an accident. We'd come to Nene Washes late on an October afternoon in 2018. The fields were dry after a long summer and most of the wintering wildfowl hadn't arrived yet, so there wasn't much to see.

Until my husband asked me about the tall grey birds he had noticed behind where I was standing. His description lit a tingle in me, could it be... YES, on turning around and spotting what he had seen my heart leapt.

Common cranes (although that name was so wrong), four of them in the field beside the river. My very first sighting. When one threw its head back and started calling those tingles ran all the way down to my feet and back up. Haunting, spectacular and beautiful, just like the birds themselves.

A family group, two adults and two smaller, buff-headed juveniles from that year's brood.

They were too far for anything but record shots. But watching them move across the washes was enough. We stayed until my husband's patience wore thin.

Sixty Cranes Two Years Later

We went back almost to the day two years on, late October 2020. This time it wasn't one family. Around 60 Common Cranes came over in skeins, line after line against the evening sky.

Photographing that many in failing light was a struggle. Seeing that many was the point. The cranes are settling in at Nene Washes.

The Common Crane UK Comeback

The history is part of why these birds are worth the trip. Common Cranes vanished as a breeding species in Britain around the 1600s, hunted out and drained out as the wetlands and marshes they depend on were turned over to farmland. For three centuries the country had no crane calls in it.

The return began in 1979, when a few wild birds settled back into part of the Norfolk Broads on their own. Since then, conservation work, reintroduction projects like the Great Crane Project in Somerset, and large-scale wetland restoration across the Fens have built the numbers back up.

Seeing Cranes at Nene Washes

To see them yourself, head for the public footpaths near the Eldernell access point at RSPB Nene Washes, off the A605 near Whittlesey. Autumn and winter give you the best odds, when the birds gather in flocks, feeding in the fields or flying out to roost.

A quiet day on the washes still puts you in front of a bird that wasn't here at all a lifetime ago.

I've spent over 30 years walking and photographing UK wildlife, with work featured in Canon EOS Magazine and a Wildlife Trusts calendar. I still learn something new on most outings.

This site is my field notebook full of photo tips, help on identifying what you see, and how to decide where to walk.