Hot on the heels of Monday’s post about a British institution, today it’s the turn of another...
It’s late June and the rain is sluicing down outside my window. It can only mean one thing: Glastonbury is back! Yep, the festival of music, mayhem and mud is here again.
It got me thinking. Is there any West Country wildlife that enjoys life wet and muddy? Cranes, I thought.
As well making lots of noise with their bugling call, they too are back in Somerset after an absence. Although, in the cranes case it is a lot longer than the year off Glastonbury has had!
An ambitious reintroduction scheme is putting the cranes back where they belong – in the wetlands of the Somerset Levels.
As you can see in the picture, just like Glastonbury, there are people in strange clothes! Here the surrogate parents are dressed up as adult cranes, teaching the youngsters how to forage and generally about life as a crane.
I’d like to think that the cranes will turn the levels into something akin to Glastonbury: muddy and full of thousands making a lot of noise!
And maybe, just maybe, in a few years time the revellers will watch as a flock of cranes fly over the pyramid stage as the sun drops behind it and one of the acts is rocking out. What a headline act that would be!
For more on our science, check out the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science web pages.