Canterbury is rolling out the red carpet to welcome three of Britain’s rarest birds back to the city. Lost to Kent for centuries, the magnificent chough, which adorn the city’s coat of arms and civic regalia, can once again be seen back in the county synonymous with this wonderful bird.

The chough, a member of the crow family, is one of the rarest birds in the UK and was driven to extinction in Kent well over 100 years ago.

The Canterbury-based charity Wildwood Trust has taken delivery of three new chough as part of a ground-breaking project to assess if these amazing birds can be released back into the Kent countryside. Famed as acrobats of the sky, the chough naturally performs majestic flying displays which can now be seen by visitors to Kent’s largest bird aviary at the Wildwood Trust animal park. Wildwood’s team of expert keepers hope to establish a breeding programme for the birds and supplement with a reintroduction project if deemed feasible.