Guest blog by Neal Warnock, RSPB NI Conservation AdvisordThis Sunday is World Curlew Day. For many of us, the thrilling bubbling call of this wonderful wader is something we never hear at all; or it’s something that our parents’ generation might speak about hearing in years gone by. In Northern Ireland, we’ve lost more than 80% of the population since 1987, with Fermanagh and the Antrim Hills the last remaining hotspots. The call of the curlew is fading, but for us in the RSPB this is a priority species and we are working hard to save it. And we all have a collective responsibility to stop curlews disappearing from our countryside, which is why we work in partnership with other organisations, landowners and farmers to try to reverse the depressing decline. One example of partnership is the Glenwherry Hill Regeneration Project, which has been running since 2009 and comprises RSPB NI, the Irish Grouse Conservation Trust, the College of Agriculture, Food & Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) and other partners working together ond an integrated management approach in a bid to ‘give nature a home in Glenwherry’.Another example is the 40 farmers involved in the RSPB Curlew Trial Management Project (CuTMP), which is investigating what level of habitat management and predator control is required to improve curlew productivity. Farmers in particular have a crucial part to play in helping to halt and reverse the decline of curlews and they really are doing their bit to help. Curlews have been in this Antrim Hills area for many years and the farmers here have grown up with them. The RSPB has been working with the landowners in this area since the 1980s. They can see the love of the species that I have and it’s my job to try and inspire the farmers to do everything they can for the birds. But I can see that they love these curlews too. Every single time I’ve gone to a farmer and said something like, ‘There’s a curlew with chicks moving into that field, can you delay field operations?’ – the farmer has agreed to it. They are doing everything they can up here. We just need the birds to start responding and to fledge more young. The first curlews normally arrive back in the last week of February. This year, the first two curlews were back on breeding grounds on February 25. One of them was reported by a farmer and the other I spotted myself (pictured, below).This is my ninth season surveying the birds and I’ve given most of the pairs names by now. It’s very emotional for me, for example, if one of the pairs I’m used to seeing doesn’t show up. That’s obviously devastating and that has occurred a few times. The most crucial time of the year is mid-June, when all of a sudden you’ll get the alarm-calling adults and you’ll be able to find out how many pairs there are with chicks and how many pairs have been unable to hatch young. I then spend time following each pair trying to estimate their productivity. That’s when I find that the ‘advisory’ element of my work really comes into force. I work very closely with the farmers to try and enable the birds to have as much success as possible – letting them know where the chicks are, what field operations might be planned and so on. There’s a huge number of tiny things that could happen that could impact on whether or not a pair fledges. For example, last year one pair's chicks took to stretching their wings on a public road, so we had to manage that. From the moment they arrive to the moment they leave, it’s very emotional for me. Forty-three pairs were recorded in Glenwherry last year (two less than in 2017) and a single pair at Greenmount Hill Farm managed to fledge all four young - the first time this has been confirmed in Glenwherry. Habitat management is crucial for curlews, so as well as rush cutting (pictured, below) and grazing to get fields into optimum condition ahead of breeding season, we also had several scrapes* installed by farmers and encouraged a number of farmers to join the Environmental Farming Scheme, which will ensure the effective land management of more than 2,000 hectares of curlew habitat in Glenwherry over the next five years. RSPB NI will continue to support each entrant over the lifetime of their agreement. (*Scrapes are shallow depressions with gently sloping edges, which seasonally hold water. They support a wide variety of invertebrates and provide important feeding areas for breeding waders.) We’ve been able to work out that the first chicks usually hatch around May 25 but there’s a period between June 10 and 20 when you can really tell how the year’s going to go because that’s when most of them will hatch – if they are going to hatch. Then it takes on average of 32 to 38 days for them to fledge. It’s important to talk about curlews now, because the situation in Northern Ireland is extremely perilous. A 2013 study across Northern Ireland suggested there are less than 500 pairs left. In Glenwherry we are finding around 40 to 45 pairs annually, but surveys and monitoring in recent years and going back to the 80s shows that they aren’t producing enough young to maintain these numbers. So we urgently need to see the productivity of the birds improving and that requires a collaboration with landowners entering environmental schemes, with advisors like me working on the ground. All in all, there are countless reasons to love curlews. I’m just so pleased to work somewhere that still has them. All photos (C) Neal Warnock