For the first time in over two hundred years, the Red-billed Chough has bred in the wild in Kent. This is a fantastic early breeding success by two of the choughs in our Southern England chough restoration project.
It is also a wonderful birthday present for Operation Chough – launched on August 4th 1987.
This is amazing work by all the project partners. Twenty choughs are now flying around the Dover area – and the first wild nest and chick! Congratulations to Wildwood Kent, Kent Wildlife Trust and the staff here at Paradise Park in Cornwall.
If you are not on Facebook you can see the video below…
…and here is the text:
“Breaking news! First wild Kentish #Chough to breed in over 200 years!
With year two of the Chough Reintroduction project in full flight we’re delighted to confirm that our first cohort have been breeding at the iconic Dover Castle. After finding a cosy hollow our clever pair of young chough collected twigs, built a nest, laid an egg and supported the chick as it fledged.
Unfortunately we suspect the British weather got the better of this little bundle of feathers but it’s a real testament to the teams at Kent Wildlife Trust, wildwoodtrustuk paradiseparkcornwall and all our project partners, funders and members to reach this milestone so soon.
But the journey is far from over, together we’ll be releasing more Chough over the next 4-5 years to establish a stable, healthy, thriving population in Kent and beyond.
If you’d like to be a chough champion and keep the chough flying high please support the project by donating, buying or joining.”
For more information from Kent Wildlife Trust click the link below:
As well as the nest cameras in chough aviaries here at Paradise Park in Cornwall, there is now an opportunity to see into wild chough nests in Ireland. This is a wonderful chance to compare the behaviours and timings of wild and captive breeding, and enhances our understanding of these clever corvids.
The first camera is in a purpose-built chough nest box, similar to the nest boxes we use at Paradise Park. The birds have been using this box for a number of years, and we have been in contact with the barn’s owner to offer advice. The cameras have been installed under licence as part of the National Parks & Wildlife Service (NPWS) research project.
The camera was supplied by wildlifewindows.co.uk and was installed by Alan McCarthy (BirdWatch Ireland). Many thanks to the owners of the barn for permission to install the camera.
LIVE Irish Chough Nest | Clonakilty, Co. Cork
The second nest is tucked up in the roof space of an agricultural building, and this nest has also been used by a pair of choughs for several years.
Spring has sprung – despite the almost continual rain in Cornwall – and birds everywhere are starting to carry twigs and nesting materials. Our breeding choughs have now been moved into secluded aviaries, and are happily building nests.
This year has been our most successful chough breeding season, thanks to a combination of an increased number of aviaries, and the long hours of constant monitoring. As always, there was a mixture of highs and lows.
The five new purpose-built chough breeding aviaries were finished on time, and the breeding pairs were put in place on Valentine’s Day as planned. This year we had eight pairs of choughs set up in seclusion aviaries, with another pair in our original chough aviary in the main park (first used in 1976). The remaining birds of our flock stayed in the large poyltunnel flight aviaries – where one pair was also successful, and raised a single chick.
The nest box cameras once again proved invaluable, giving us an insight into the normally unseen inside of a chough’s nest. Red-billed Choughs are well known as being an intelligent member of the crow family, and the vocalisations and behaviours continued to delight viewers.
Some of the behaviour was baffling – a male bird removing chicks as soon as they hatched, or another removing eggs. Other behaviour was quite touching. The clip below shows a female laying an egg, while the male waits patiently at the edge of the nest.
Three of the pairs started building nests immediately, and nests were quickly filling up with eggs. At this point, the weather suddenly changed back to winter mode, and the remaining pairs seemed to stall. At the end of March we had the interesting situation of eggs in nests, other nests being built, and some not even started!
The total number of eggs laid this year was forty one – a number we could only have imagined a few years ago. One pair did lay two clutches, which is highly unusual. (However, the male had already thrown out the first four eggs.) This pair eventually laid seven eggs, and produced just one chick.
As the birds had staggered their laying times, we had the benefit of being able to concentrate on any supplementary feeding, chick weighing, health monitoring and nest manipulation.
In mid May Liz Corry & Laura Gardner from the Wildwood Trust came down to take four chicks for the upcoming release in Kent. The four birds were about a week old, and were taken to be creche reared with other chicks, as a large family group. This meant the chicks, while steady around people, would be much less likely to become imprinted on their adopted human parents. It would also make the chicks suitable for very early training for the release later this year.
The final figures – forty one eggs, twenty two hatched, and twelve fledged. The number of eggs laid has been slightly skewed by the pair which laid seven eggs to produce one chick. Almost all of the eggs when checked were fertile, which is a good indication of the health of our flock – now approaching some fifty birds.
The chough breeding season is now in full swing, with all of our paired birds building nests, and most laying clutches of eggs.
Three pairs laid eggs very early, and we now have chicks in two of these nests. Sadly, the two chicks in the third nest were ejected by the male. He has been paired before (last year), and his partner produced eggs, but they did not hatch. It would seem he understands the process up to the point of hatching, but has yet to get to grips with chick feeding. The male was removed, but the remaining eggs did not hatch.
Another nest laid four eggs and then the female dutifully removed them almost immediately after! We thought that their season was over, but the female has now started a second clutch. This is quite a rare occurrence in choughs, and time will tell if these eggs are fertile.
Two nests now have two chicks each – nest 302 in the new seclusion aviaries, and nest 29S which is in the main park. The chicks in 302 hatched on the 23rd & 24th of April, and both are progressing well. Chough chicks weigh 10-12 grams when they hatch, and we will be weighing them regularly as part of our monitoring.
The nest 29S is the aviary in which we first bred choughs way back in 1979. It does not have the service hatch which we have added to our seclusion aviaries, but we have been able to install a camera, which unfortunately has stopped working! This means we are relying on nest observations from keeping staff listening for feeding calls and looking for egg shells. Happily, we have confirmed two chicks, as Curator David Woolcock’s phone picture shows. These two are between 8 – 10 days old.
These two chicks are very well developed, with the tiniest of wing feathers just starting to appear. The two remaining eggs are unlikely to hatch.
As the end of April approaches we now have four chicks, with a further twenty-one eggs being incubated in the other nests…
…and we have a nest in one of the polytunnel aviaries which has an egg (with more to come).
All of our nine pairs of breeding choughs are now building nests. Some are more advanced than others, and we have one pair which delighted us with an early egg (or two).
These two clips show some of the remarkable behaviour of choughs in their domestic environment. We have seen similar behaviour in the past, and it gives an insight into a small world possibly never seen in the wild.
In the first clip, the male arrives as he knows the female is about to lay her second egg. She laid a first egg two days before, but his actions are likely to be motivated by her behaviour rather than timing.
The egg is laid. The female inspects the new egg, and hops out of the nest to feed. Shortly afterwards, the male goes in to the nest box and casts an eye over the two eggs.
Later the same day, we decided to adjust the angle of the camera to give a better view. We can do this using a hatch at the back of the nest box. This gave an opportunity to take this picture of the inside of the chough’s nest. Ali is in the background, distracting the birds, which are sitting on top of the nest box, leaving a few treats for later.
Over the next week, it is hoped this pair will lay more eggs. The normal clutch size for choughs is five. We have two eggs in another nest, with many more on the way.
We have a live stream of one of our nine nests can be seen here.
Spring has sprung and birds everywhere are starting to carry twigs and nesting materials at the start of a new season. Our breeding choughs have now been moved into secluded aviaries, and are happily building nests.
This year we have six breeding pairs. Our choughs are in great demand as there are exciting new developments for chough conservation underway. This could lead to releases, along with habitat restoration projects, in the UK in the next few years.
We monitor all the nests and choose one to show, depending on the activity going on at any particular time.
The Operation Chough webcam is back! All the nestboxes have been fully refurbished and pairs of birds in their individual aviaries on 23rd March, back from their winter flocking enclosures.
We are breeding Red-billed Choughs as part of our long-term project to conserve and expand the species, which has been pushed to the fringes of its former distribution.
This year we have nine breeding pairs – four more than usual. Our choughs are in great demand as there are exciting new developments for chough conservation underway. This could lead to releases, along with habitat restoration projects, in the UK in the next few years.
We monitor all the nests and choose one to show, depending the activity going on at any particular time.
Our five nests produced fifteen eggs. Eight of these have hatched and all eight chicks are doing well – after a couple of hiccups…
On May 10th, we noticed the third chick in nest five was very small (16 grams), and in danger of being pushed to the bottom of the nest by its siblings. There were four overdue (infertile) eggs in nest three, so we decided to foster the small chick to this nest. The female in nest three was still patiently sitting, and she was expecting to see eggs hatching. We gave her what she wanted.
We put the chick in the box using the hatch at the back – Ali was in the aviary putting in live food and distracting the adults. The parent birds both went on top of the nest box, as they have been conditioned to do.
As well as the chick, we added a piece of egg shell. This mimics real-life events, and the normal reaction of the female should be to come in and take the egg shell away. If she did this, we would know that she would accept the young chick as her own.
As soon as Ali had left the aviary, the female returned to the nest and very gently removed the shell. Moments later, the male hopped into the nest to inspect the new arrival and left. The female then came back in and started to brood the chick. Success!
The chick is now over two weeks old, and is progressing well – getting food from both parents, and gaining weight.
Feuding…
Events were not as joyful in nest two. On the evening of May 15th the male parent became very agitated and started to attack the female – and the three young chicks. Luckily, we had spotted this while monitoring at home, and decided something had to be done.
It was getting dark, and soon we would not be able to get into the aviary without disturbing all the other nesting pairs nearby. However, staff were on hand (staying on site due to the lockdown), and got in quickly to catch the male. He spent the night in solitary confinement, and was relased the next day into the large polytunnel group.
On checking our records we found this male had done exactly the same thing in 2015 – on the exact same date – very bizarre!
We believe male choughs at this time of year are “pumped up” and ready to spend sixteen or more hours a day searching for food in the wild. This is something we try to replicate in the aviaries by hiding food, giving the males some distraction.
Nest Totals
Nest 1 has two chicks. One egg did not hatch
Nest 2 has three chicks. One egg did not hatch. Mister chough has left home.
Nest 3 has one adopted chick from Nest 5. Four eggs were infertile.
Nest 4 has no eggs.
Nest 5 has two chicks (plus the third which is in Nest 3). One egg did not hatch.
Total to date is eight chicks, most being two weeks old.
Our first chough egg was laid on April 9th. Since then four nests have been filled up with clutches of various sizes. Choughs will lay up to five eggs in a clutch, with sizes diminishing with age of the adult female.
Nest 1 started on April 12th, and now has three eggs.
Nest 2 has four eggs, laid between April 15th and 21st.
Nest 3 has four eggs, laid between April 9th and 15th.
Nest 4 is still being constructed – there may not be eggs forthcoming.
Nest 5 has has four eggs laid between April 13th and 18th.
We know that our captive choughs (and probably choughs in the wild) start incubating full-time when the third egg is laid. This delays the development of the first two eggs, so as many chicks as possible can hatch together. This means they are of similar size, and have more equal chances of survival.
Using the 18 – 19 days of incubation estimate, our first chicks should be hatching on May 3rd or 4th.