It is a maxim among rewilding enthusiasts that nature needs time and space to flourish.
With this in mind, we see that some of our greatest wildlife success stories have come about not through carefully implemented plans written by ecologists, but by nature itself taking the lead.
Humpback whales, for instance, are now regularly off the west coast of Ireland after commercial hunting ended in the 1980s, buzzards have spectacularly recolonised the country after persecution was outlawed and are now found nearly everywhere, while even the largest expansion of forest in centuries is under way, not because people are planting trees but because native trees are germinating across lands that had been used for industrial peat mining but which are now left to themselves.
Perhaps the most spectacular story comes from one of these midlands bogs where, in 2019, two very large birds caught the attention of ornithologists. While common cranes had been seen in Ireland on and off over the years, for the first time since they went extinct in the 16th century, here was a pair building a nest and laying eggs.
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These are magnificent birds, over a metre in height, with a dark, slender neck brushed with a white stripe, red eyeliner, silvery plumage across its wings and a ruffled rear draping over long stilt-like legs.
With the extinction of the cranes from Ireland many centuries ago, the moniker passed to the grey heron, a common bird of rivers and coastlines which is superficially similar but only half the size.
Throughout the ages cranes were culturally significant in Ireland, were kept as pets by nobility and may have been associated in folklore with death (cranes feature prominently in Celtic religious art, from high crosses to holy manuscripts).
Lorcan O’Toole, who has written extensively about cranes, evokes the sight and sounds of these large birds, arriving in large flocks with the coming of spring, honking and screeching in a land that had known only the quiet of winter for months on end. They must have made quite the impression.
But extinction brings an unravelling of connections, a slow seeping away of cultural memory and a voiding of the ancient meanings our ancestors once found in plants, animals and places. Now they have returned. It is tantalising to think that these cranes could bind us to them with new connections and new threads of meaning.
The cranes that attempted to nest in 2019 failed to rear chicks. This is not unusual for relatively long-lived birds (about 20 years) and which pair for life. In 2020, they were back but failed again to get past the egg-laying stage.
In 2021, chicks were hatched but failed to fledge. But still our crane couple persevered and in 2022 they successfully reared a chick, the first to be born in Ireland in centuries, while now confident parents, additional chicks have been fledged in the years since.
That the birds chose a bit of bog where the machines had simply been turned off should teach us a lot about what’s needed in response to the nature crisis. In the absence of human activity and the silencing of pumps ceaselessly chugging away to drain water off the bog, birches, willows and bulrushes set about vegetating the fringes of deep pools and the margins of shallow water expanses. The cranes have decided, in their wisdom, that this undisturbed mosaic of wet woodland and marshy reed beds is a safe place to raise a family.
Alex Copland is an ornithologist and was among the first to identify the nesting attempt. He describes how the discovery was “fantastic … I remember walking to the site and there were lots of young herons flying around, and I was convinced I was going to find herons. So, I was stunned when I saw and heard a crane walking around in the reed beds … it was absolutely incredible. And suddenly there was a second one.”
Copland was working for Bord na Móna at that time and had seen occasional cranes on their bogs. “With the increase in the crane population in the UK, particularly in Scotland, and the recent recolonisation of Wales, it was always something I hoped might happen in Ireland. There were more and more sightings every year, so I guess it was just a matter of time. Some of the Bord na Móna bogs are perfect for them, given the size of them and the habitats that are there.”
Copland tells me that despite the size and often noisy calls from the birds, they can nevertheless be “incredibly elusive ... You can see them on the cutaway, they can walk into the birch scrub and just disappear.”
He notes that now that this pair are experienced, there “is nothing stopping them” while more birds are starting to pop up in other parts of the country. A report of a young crane in a separate location opens the possibility that another pair are nesting but has simply gone unnoticed.
Although the origin of these birds is not known, the population across Europe generally, including in Britain, is increasing and although they can hang around in the winter, it may also be that these birds are migrating, perhaps to the Mediterranean region.
Copland thinks the bog on which the monitored cranes are nesting is the perfect site due to a combination of lack of disturbance and a mix of habitats, with pools of deeper water and dense reeds where they can build their nest, an enormous floating structure that can rise and fall with fluctuating water levels.
With the end of large-scale peat mining, there is no shortage of these conditions across Bord na Móna-held lands, which places a great responsibility on the semi-State company for the conservation and future management of an expanding crane population.
Cranes are listed under Annex I of the Birds Directive which requires EU member states to designate Special Protection Areas (SPA) for their benefit. As cranes were not breeding when Ireland’s SPA network was originally designated, there are no such areas yet and, according to Bord na Móna, no plans to create one.
Mark McCory is the ecology manager for Bord na Móna and agrees that “it’s pretty amazing that the same birds have been coming back to the same site for five years, and we have confirmation (March 2025) that they are back again. We also have records of other birds appearing on some of our bogs.”
The company is mindful of the presence of the cranes and sees this as part of their wider programme of rehabilitation of public lands under their care for both climate and biodiversity. “Over the next 10, 20, 30 years there’s going to be much more habitat that will be suitable for cranes,” says McCory.
He says the company is updating its Biodiversity Action Plan, which he hopes will be ready this year (the last one expired in 2021 and was launched before the cranes took up residence) although he notes “so far the focus has not been on species-specific management”.
Taking action for climate and biodiversity can frequently be done in tandem, eg when rewetting peatlands, but it is not always the case. Protecting lands for species like cranes can be at odds with the roll out of renewable energy infrastructure and Bord na Móna has plans across its estate for wind and solar projects.
In particular, the bog with the nesting cranes is at the pre-planning stage for a solar farm. Copland thinks this is not too much of a concern once sufficient space is provided for the nest. The birds, he believes, could happily move and forage around the panels.
“It’s not like wind turbines, which are hugely impactful on the landscape, and that is something that would cause disturbance to cranes”. McCory notes that “this is a particularly large bog, I don’t see any issue in terms of the footprint of the development versus the area that the cranes are using, there’s plenty of space.”
Space and time. If we can set aside space for the cranes the future for these magnificent creatures is bright. Time will tell.
