Posted on behalf of Emily Field, Project Manager - Stone-curlew UK (EU LIFE+)
Our penultimate post in our stone-curlew series comes from Chris Knights. Chris has been involved in almost every aspect of stone-curlew conservation from farm management to professional photography for more than 50 years. Few people have dedicated so much of their lives to stone-curlew conservation and this is why in 2015 we presented him with a lifetime achievement award.
He farmed around 1,300 hectares of predominantly arable land in West Norfolk, and went to extraordinary lengths to ensure the success of stone-curlews nesting on the land he managed. He allows the RSPB to use his images to highlight conservation management to other farmers and the wider community. Now retired, he continues to monitor and photograph wildlife on the farm and plays a key role advocating stone-curlew conservation and habitat management to other farmers and landowners throughout the Brecks.
One of Chris Knights’ award winning photographs (c) Chris Knights
"I’ve been keen on wildlife from an early age. As a boy growing up in the Brecks, I spent hours watching birds and finding their nests. As a landowner and farm manager from the 1960s until my recent retirement, I was keen to do all I could to help stone-curlews along.
I used to pay farm workers out of my own pocket for every stone-curlew nest they found, and we would then work the farming operations around nests to ensure that birds could incubate eggs and raise chicks undisturbed; in fact sometimes we would delay working an entire field to accommodate the birds.
We must have been doing something right because stone-curlew numbers increased year on year. As a wildlife photographer I’m very fortunate to have stone-curlews on my doorstep, and they are fantastic birds to photograph. I got a shot of a stone-curlew and a lamb which I’m very pleased with – it won second prize in the British Birds Bird Photographer of the Year Award. In the 1990s I also made a film about stone-curlews called “Stone Runners” for the Survival ITV series. Stone-curlews are very elusive, so to capture different aspects of their behaviour on film takes a lot of time, patience and persistence.
I’m extremely pleased that the current farming tenants have continued the tradition of looking after stone-curlews and am proud that the farm now holds one of the highest densities of breeding stone-curlews in the UK."