Frightening to think curlews are in such trouble. The UK’s population has halved since the mid-1990s, and this week speakers at a major conference dedicated to reversing the decline tell their curlew stories. Today Harry Paget-Wilkes, Site Manager of the RSPB’s West Sedgemoor and Greylake reserves, tells us his story...
It is thought curlews did not colonise the Somerset Levels and Moors in any numbers until the 1950s. They perhaps benefited from early drainage, which reduced the amount of spring and summer flooding and allowed a low-intensity, hay-based farming system to dominate.
Photo 1: West Sedgemoor by David Kjaer (rspb-images.com)
Sadly however, since the 1970s the number of good breeding sites has declined dramatically, reflecting the situation across much of the country.
There has been a 77 per cent decline in the number of breeding sites on the Levels since regular surveys began in 1977, in part due to conversion of hay meadows to silage fields.
Photo 2: Curlew by Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
However the curlew’s story on Somerset’s wetlands is not that simple. Although curlews are now restricted to just two sites, the RSPB’s West Sedgemoor reserve and King’s Sedgemoor, part of which is a National Nature Reserve, the population has not declined since the 1990s. In fact it now appears to be recovering – population levels in 2016 were the highest on record.
This success can be put down to one site in particular, the RSPB’s West Sedgemoor reserve, 1,000 hectares of wet grassland where 42 pairs successfully bred last year (for the Levels as a whole the number was 49 pairs).
At West Sedgemoor, the RSPB, its tenants and neighbouring farmers have successfully restored and protected large areas of species-rich hay meadows, the favourite nesting area for curlews in lowlands.
The key to success here appears to be the large areas that are cut for hay in the middle or second half of July, later than in intensively-farmed fields that predominate in the surrounding area.
Many curlew chicks don’t fledge until that part of the summer, and waiting until then means these meadows give the chicks much better feeding opportunities, nor are they at risk from farm machinery.
There is hope for the future for curlew in this landscape, and by working together on a landscape-scale there is hope they can spread back to many of their former haunts.
Photo 3: Curlew by Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)