The Corn Crake (Crex crex) is a small bird in the family Rallidae. It is the only member of the genus Crex (Bechstein, 1803).
Their breeding habitat is not marshes like most crakes, but, as the name implies, meadows and arable farmland. They breed across Europe and western Asia, migrating to Africa in winter. They are in steep decline across most of their range because modern farming practices mean that nests and birds are destroyed by mowing or harvesting before breeding is finished.
Adults have mainly brown heavily spotted upperparts, blue-grey head and neck, and reddish streaked flanks. They have a short bill. In flight they show chestnut wings and long dangling legs.
Immature birds are similar, but the blue-grey is replaced by buff. The downy chicks are black, as with all rails.
Corn Crakes are very secretive in the breeding season, and are then mostly heard far more often than they are seen. They are hard to flush, walking away through the vegetation. The song, mainly at night, is a repetitive '"crex crex", like two notched sticks being rubbed together. These birds mainly eat insects.
The name used commonly to be spelled as a single word, 'Corncrake', but the official English name is Corn Crake, and the trend now is to follow this.
Male and female corncrakes are very similar in appearance; both have light yellowish-brown plumage, and the face and upper parts of the breast are pale grey.
The corncrake is easier to hear than to see, the call is a repeated rasping 'crrek crrek' similar to a nail scraping along a comb (2).
The corncrake is a UK Biodiversity Action Plan (UK BAP) species; the Species Action Plan aims to maintain the population, increase its range and in the long-term, restore the species to parts of its former UK range (5).
Only 20 singing male Corncrakes were recorded that year, and there were serious concerns that, given the poor weather conditions during the breeding, the population may decline further in 2003.
Corncrakes began to decline when traditional farming systems began to be replaced by modern agricultural methods.
Corncrakes, particularly young chicks, are reluctant to cross open ground, and may become trapped in an island of remaining grass at the centre of the field as mowing proceeds.
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