Soundscapes past and present

Whooper Swans, Julie Edgley

By Matthew Hay, Natural Capital Manager, 25th June 2024

With the loss of nature and, in particular, abundance from our landscapes, one of the things we don’t even realise we are missing in the UK are soundscapes. In the past, places like High Fen would have been a cacophony of different sounds at different times of year. Whistling whooper swans and vast flocks of widgeon in the winter months. Yodelling black-tailed godwits and calling toads come spring. The lyrical songs of golden oriole in the summer and roaring red deer stags on frosty, autumn mornings.

Some of these sounds are still there, albeit often quieter than they would have been. Some, like golden oriole, we’ll be lucky to ever hear again. But others that had disappeared are now starting to return.

This spring, High Fen resonated to the sound of bugling cranes (Grus grus). This species was once so widespread in the Fens that hundreds would be served as food in Mediaeval banquets and, to this day, lots of places are still named after them: Cranmoor, Cranfield and Tranmere (Tran being the old Norse word for crane, similar to the still-extant Swedish name Trana) being just three examples and even the fruit, cranberry, draws its name from these striking birds.

Sadly, by the 1500s, drainage of Britain’s wetlands and overhunting sent the crane extinct in this country and for 400 years, no bugling birds were heard in England.

Then, in 1979, a trio of migrating cranes were blown off course and ended up in the Norfolk broads. Two of these birds stayed in East Anglia the following spring and tried to breed. By 1982, they successfully fledged a single chick and, just like that, breeding cranes were back in England!

Since then, cranes have continued their slow but steady natural recolonisation of the Fens and the Broads. Their numbers are now rising quickly, helped by a reintroduction project in the southwest, but as recently as 2017 there were still only 10 breeding pairs in the East of England, so we can’t help but feel fortunate to be hosting two of our own at High Fen.

Breeding cranes are hugely sensitive to human disturbance, so if we’re going to be a successful breeding site for Britain’s tallest bird, we’ll have to manage access to parts of High Fen strictly at certain times of year. But don’t worry, even if you can’t see the cranes, the prehistoric sound of their bugling call will make your hairs stand on end – it’s a true sound of wild wetlands and a noise we hope will get louder and louder at High Fen in the years to come.