Here's a guest blog from one of our team working at the front line of curlew conservation as we work with farmers and landowners to tackle the losses of this iconic wading bird. Our work in England is part funded by Natural England's Action for Birds In England programme for which we are grateful.
I’m Matt Marsh, and I’m one of the six Research Assistants (the other five hard workers being Jenny, Tom, Steve, Helen, Chris, and of course our wonderful line manager, Pip!) who worked on the Trial Management for Curlew Project this season.
The trial sites where we worked this year are all in stunning parts of the UK, but personally I have a soft spot for Geltsdale as that is where I was based for the duration of my contract. I’m delighted to have the chance to sum up our field seasons in this short blog, and to give an idea of what it’s been like for us working day to day in the uplands, wandering the hills searching for curlew. I will try to give my best insight!
Our contracts started back in March, and after a couple of days spent in Edinburgh for our induction (picking up equipment, Personal Protective Equipment, and our vehicles) we all went our separate ways to our field sites. We were eased in gently with a few days of fox scat transects (fox scats are fox poo, in case you were wondering – ed), which gave us an opportunity to explore our sites and get used to the terrain we’d be working on.
After a week or so we started our bird surveys, accompanied by the usual early morning starts! For me, this meant normally waking between 5:00am and 5:45am, depending on where I was surveying. Of course we could only survey if the weather forecast was relatively clear and not too windy, but that didn’t mean missing the odd soaking! In April I also got caught in a few snow showers, which doesn’t sound like much, but when you’ve never experienced snow in the uplands, it can be quite the dramatic! However, the majority of days were fine, and gave me ample opportunity to take in the sights, sounds and smells around me whilst surveying.
Some of my personal highlights include encountering (and very nearly stepping on) numerous adders, seeing short eared owls hunting in the early morning light, and of course hearing the trilling call of the iconic curlew, which I think epitomises the very moors they call home.
Curlews are in trouble and we're working with farmers and landowners to save them
Of course paying attention to the wildlife and scenery around me, be that for the job or my own pleasure, often meant that I ended up sinking into bogs and falling into shallow gully’s carved by dried up or (to the detriment of my clothes) still full flowing streams. My colleagues, I’m sure can empathise with this!
With most of the job involving working alone, I also often found myself talking to the animals around me, greeting the reserve cows as they stared at me quizzically while I surveyed, or apologising to odd bird I flushed as I walked through the vegetation. A little bit strange, I know, hopefully I’m not the only one! I became very familiar where individual bird pairs lived (from stonechats, and whinchats, to golden plover and of course, curlew), and felt comfortably reassured each time I came across them as I surveyed. Although this gave some consistency, no two days were the same, and the unpredictability of what you may come across while you were out working was, for me, a huge perk of the job. Talking of perks, I have to mention the hen harriers as well, which I came across numerous times whilst out surveying. They were a joy to watch and I have my fingers and toes crossed for the one chick that fledged from the reserve nest this year!
Doing fox scat surveys throughout the season, and having over a month of vegetation surveys at the end of the season, meant we did a LOT of walking, and I am confident we all must have walked a few hundred kilometres over the course of our contracts. I’m much fitter than I was before I started, and all my current trousers are a bit looser around the waist, so I can certainly say this job has benefitted my health if nothing else! Hopefully that’s not the only benefit, and the work being done in this project and many others will help to shed light on what we can do to save the curlew.