AS a naturalist I am perhaps more optimistic about the future than some others.

Last week I wrote about my hopes for our barn owls. A couple of weeks ago I read about the RSPB's success with regard to breeding corncrakes around the Western Isles of Scotland (The Hebrides).

The society reported a 10 per cent increase in population compared to last year. They point out that this is mainly due to the efforts of crofters who have changed their farming practices.

Corncrakes are migrants which spend our winter in Africa and then move north to breed in wields around farms.

They are now all but extinct in Britain and yet in the 1040s they were quite common.

In Victorian times there were so many that they were eaten. Many countrymen had a corncrake rattle and I have one in my possession.

These wooden instruments were used to imitate the sound of a male on the look out for a mate.

It sounds rather like a comb being scraped by a ginger nail and accounts for the scientific name for the corncrake which is crex crex. The sound caused the birds to peep out of cover to see a male or a rival and so they were shot.

It was not the hunting, however, which caused the demise of the species but the changes in farming practice. Improved fertilisers means that crops mature earlier and also all mowing is now done by machine.

These cut the crop but they also destroy the eggs and young of the corncrake. Farming is now such big business that on the mainland I cannot see the corncrake every making a comeback.

The crofters of Hebridean Scotland, however, are much more traditional and this accounts for the remarkable increase.

If this continues we will be able to record more corncrakes passing through East Lancashire whilst moving from breeding to wintering areas.

This, as they say in our area, is "better than nowt".

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