The corncrake is one of Britain's most remarkable conservation recovery stories. Its welfare depends almost entirely on the timing of grass cutting in hay meadows.
Corncrake chick welfare is entirely dependent on grass cutting management. Traditional scythe cutting was slow enough for birds to escape; modern tractor cutting kills birds and chicks rapidly in unmowed strips. Agri-environment payments that delay cutting until after peak chick rearing and mandate inside-out cutting patterns have directly saved thousands of individual corncrake lives. Each management decision on a hay meadow in corncrake range is a welfare decision for individual nesting birds.