After a 200-year absence, the rare red-billed chough has been returned to its ancient Kent homeland
Words and photos by RICHARD TAYLOR-JONES
The sea is a dazzling turquoise, chiselled rough then smooth by a stiff warm breeze blowing up the English Channel. As I sit in the long grass surrounded by flowers nodding chaotically in the gusts and eddies blowing up the cliff face, I have to admit I’m pleased with the results of my bird survey. It means the first stage of my GCSE geography project, The Avian Diversity of the White Cliffs of Dover, is complete.
Fulmars, kittiwakes, swallows, jackdaws, kestrels – they and many more have been spotted and recorded in my small, well-worn and smudged red notebook. I’ve worked hard at this project, and enjoyed every minute.
That day was 30 years ago now and I remember it well. Sadly, I never kept the notebook to remind me of the full list of that summer’s sightings. However, standing on the very same cliffs in July 2023, there have been some additions to the local birdlife that I never would have believed possible.
In the 1980s, I wouldn’t have been able to list raven or peregrine, yet both have returned following a process of natural recolonisation. These are very special birds and a good-news story for the area. But there’s another species making a comeback that’s even more special. It has been missing for centuries and has needed a huge helping hand to find its way home. It’s the red-billed chough, or simply the chough.
The chough is a hugely symbolic bird for Kent. Legend has it that the bird’s distinctive red beak and feet came from dabbling and paddling in Archbishop Thomas Becket’s blood, following his murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.
Dean of the cathedral Jane Smith is well aware of the bird’s significance to the building. “Images of the birds still exist in ancient coats of arms on the ceiling, a way of keeping Becket’s story alive during the time of Henry VIII, who tried banishing his memory,” she says, as we stand quietly beneath the spires. “They also feature on the City of Canterbury’s coat of arms, and on numerous pub signs across the county.”
Jane would love to see these birds back above the Dover Cliffs, just as Shakespeare describes in King Lear: “The crows and choughs that wing the midway air; Show scarce so gross as beetles.” These birds clearly belong here in Kent.
Despite its deeply rooted cultural connection with the county, the chough went extinct in Kent some 200 years ago. It was a similar st
