Craning to see the biggy smalls – Wings of the Week

I’ve talked about the Cranes of East Anglia before. When we first saw them, I think they numbered in the thirties, this week, I see someone reporting 100+ at RSPB Ouse Washes near Manea in Cambridgeshire. We’ve seen them in various places over the last few years, but apparently, the species ain’t what it used to be. For more than 150 years, ornithologists have debated the identity of unusually large fossilised crane bones found across Europe. It was assumed they were the remains of an extinct giant species. New DNA research suggests that the crane remains from France, Germany, Spain, and the UK were not a mysery giant, dubbed Grus primigenia, but simply bigger specimens of our extant Common Crane (Grus grus). The evidence suggests that G. grus was much bigger as recently as Saxon times, ~884 years ago, and has become smaller ever since. Why this might be is open to debate. The researchers say that the reduction in size may be due to ancient climate change and/or human land use change…

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