The chough, a charismatic cliff-dwelling corvid, has bred in Kent for the first time in two centuries.
A young pair among eight birds released last year defied expectations to successfully breed this summer, making a nest on Dover Castle and rearing one chick, which fledged in June.
The milestone is an unexpectedly early success for the long-term project to bring the red-billed birds back to the Kent coastline.
According to Kentish legend, the chough (pronounced “chuff”) obtained its bright red beak and legs by wading in the blood of Thomas Becket, the archbishop murdered in Canterbury cathedral by four knights from Henry II’s household.
The species vanished from England, mostly because of changing farming practices, until three birds took up residence on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall in 2001. Since then, concerted efforts to restore suitable beetle-rich habitat has helped numbers rise to 200 birds in Cornwall, with a record 113 chicks fledging in 2023. Choughs have also been successfully restored to Jersey.
Their reintroduction to Kent involves major habitat restoration – with Kent Wildlife Trust bringing back swaths of chalk grassland – as well as a breed-and-release programme masterminded by Wildwood Trust.
Chicks bred by Wildwood Trust and Paradise Park in Cornwall are hand-reared in mixed groups so that they learn from each other and will stick together in the wild. When still very young, the chicks are raised in an aviary at their release site, on farmland close to Dover.
Before they can fly, young birds are taken for “walkies” out of the aviary each day, so they learn to probe the grassland for beetles, worms and other sources of food.
The birds are given expert veterinary care but also recall training, so that once the birds are released into the wild they will return to the open-roofed aviary when they require protection – from predators or extreme weather – as well as extra food.
Of eight birds released last summer, seven survived the winter and, despite not being quite sexually mature, two choughs began building a nest on Dover Castle.
This was well chosen: surrounding jackdaw nests gave the choughs protection from other avian predators, such as the resurgent peregrine falcon, which made off with one chough released this year.
Liz Corry, chough release superviser for Wildwood Trust, said: “We expected the released birds to play with sticks. What we didn’t expect so early on was that they built a nest, laid eggs and incubated them, with one chick surviving.”
The chick fledged successfully in June but the first weeks out of the nest are always challenging for choughs and the bird went missing during gales, and has not been seen since early July.
“It’s nature, it’s what we expected,” said Corry, “but it was amazing that they bred so soon, and we have a good group of choughs flying around Dover, and they’re being joined by new cohorts from further releases this year.”
The project is based on 40 years of chalk grassland restoration by Kent Wildlife Trust, with feasibility studies identifying Dover, positioned at the end of a network of chalk valleys, as possessing a critical mass of suitable chough habitat.
Paul Hadaway, the director of conservation for Kent Wildlife Trust, said: “Creating and connecting habitats at scale has been the starting point for the red-billed chough’s journey back. Grazed chalk grassland can contain as many as 40 species per sq metre and supports hundreds of species of invertebrates. It is an incredibly important habitat, and conservation grazing management by animals is crucial to maintaining its diversity.”
The project aims to have 15 pairs breeding in the wild in a decade, but the big task is to ensure that there is enough wild food for the species. Studies have revealed the disappearance of huge numbers of dung beetles, a loss linked to anti-worming and anti-parasite drugs given to livestock. The chough is helped by wildlife-friendly farming methods that allow its staple foods, such as dung beetles and other grass-dwelling invertebrates, to thrive.
Corry added: “The vision is to reestablish a population in Kent and it connects up with other restored populations along the south coast, all the way to the choughs in Cornwall. That’s the big, long-term goal.”
