This week we're focusing on the plight of the curlew - a bird that would be at the top of many lists to be the UK's totemic bird - not just because our coasts and estuaries host internationally important numbers of them in the winter, not only because our hills and moors (and some lowland areas too) are places that are globally significant breeding areas for curlew but as much because their wild presence and evocative calls are part of the soul of our countryside. They have woven their existence into our consciousness, our art and culture and yet they are in trouble.
Here I look at what needs to happen to safeguard the most important places that curlews depend upon for their survival
Wildlife often defines a sense of place – close your eyes and imagine your favourite space. The dark wood distilling the liquid notes of nightingales into an exquisite rapture, a swirling flock of starlings that holds our attention on a winter’s evening – we can all have our cherished moments.
Curlew’s have got this place-defining trick down to a fine art – their impressive presence and wild call ensures they are going to get noticed!
Growing up in Kent curlews were, for me, a bird of the winter. Walking in stately procession through the flocks of dunlin and scurrying sanderling before stopping to extract a ragworm from the mud.
A curlew using its long, curved bill to find food in the mud. Photo credit: Tim Melling
And their call as they flew into roost in the face of the rising tide.
Years later it was that call again; only wilder and more urgent that drew me into the hills of northern England.
Curlews add immeasurably to the sense of place to which we earth-bound humans so readily respond – but for them that sense of place is simply about survival. Our coasts and estuaries give homes and winter refuge to curlews that breed in Scotland and northern England, where they are joined by others from Scandinavia and the Baltic.
Their numbers build up in the autumn and although they can be found in many coastal localities, it is Morecambe Bay that tops the list – regularly hosting more than 10,000 individuals. The top five best estuaries for curlew include the Wash, the Dee, the Severn and the Thames.
Morecambe Bay and the Wash cram in so many curlew that the numbers are recognised to be of international importance – and the good news is that our great world-renowned coastal wetlands are well protected benefiting from designations under the European Nature Directives. Curlews, as well as all our other wintering wildfowl and waders, highlight the global responsibilities the UK has to ensure their safe long term future.
In the spring curlews head north to their breeding grounds, and as the weather relents they claim their nesting territories. The bulk of our curlews (if I can define ‘ours’ as the ones that raise their young in the UK) now nest on the hills and moors though there are still small populations on lower ground in places like the Brecks in East Anglia and the Somerset Levels.
The numbers of curlews nesting in the UK is sliding (here’s an earlier blog that looks in more detail at the trouble they are in) and just as our wintering numbers are internationally import so, too, is the breeding population; up to 25% of the world’s curlew population calls our islands home.
A key challenge is to ensure that the most important places for nesting curlews are identified and effectively protected and designated. This is much more than as simple paper exercise, as protecting the best sites and ensuring that the right action is being taken for curlews is an essential part of making sure that we can halt the loss of the bird that calls its name and breathes life into our hills.
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