Richard Archer, Senior Conservation Officer, explains more about protecting breeding curlews on the Somerset Levels
The national decline in breeding curlews has been well publicised, especially on the upland moors, where most of the breeding pairs are. People are less aware that curlew still breed on lowland farmland, especially in damp, traditionally-managed hay meadows. Lowland England for example has over 260 breeding pairs, found in places such as the Somerset Levels, the Gloucestershire Hams, the Upper Thames Tributaries and the Lower Derwent Valley in North Yorkshire. Given that the UK has about a quarter of the world population of breeding curlew, these lowland farmland habitats are still very valuable, and the RSPB and its partners work closely with farmers in many of these areas to protect them.
Curlew on farmland, West Sedgemoor. Image: Richard Archer, RSPB
Farmland on the Somerset Levels hosts the largest remaining area of damp, traditionally-managed hay meadow and pasture in the UK and is home to about 50 pairs of breeding curlew. In 2017, the RSPB started a three-year project to look at why the Levels population appears to be stable, and to consider what we with our farming tenants and our farming neighbours can do to help curlew spread back to neighbouring sites where they have disappeared.
West Sedgemoor in spring and early summer is a wonderful place. Traditional hay meadows and pastures are full of the sounds of new life, including from mid February returning curlew, with their array of bubbling calls and spectacular aerial displays. Adults are very feisty and defend their territories vigorously against buzzards, grey herons and carrion crows which venture into their airspace. Their territory fields are often full of bright yellow marsh marigold and the deep purple of southern marsh orchids, with a succession of damp-loving grasses and sedges as the spring progresses.
A typical curlew nest of four eggs on West Sedgemoor 2017. Image: Richard Archer, RSPB
Most curlew territories on West Sedgemoor and nearby King’s Sedgemoor are located in species-rich hay meadows, and chicks spend most of their time in these same fields, where there is lots of invertebrate food (such as grasshoppers and spiders) and the grassland is dense enough to provide cover for the chicks to hide in, but not too dense to make it difficult to move about. Because water levels in the adjacent ditches are held quite high in early spring, the grassland soils remain damp into late June, encouraging invertebrate abundance and making it easier for adults and sometimes the chicks to probe the soil for food, although the chicks, with their shorter bills, mainly take food from the soil surface and from vegetation.
Curlew chick hiding in long grass. West Sedgemoor 2017. Image: Richard Archer, RSPB
Over the past two springs, we have monitored curlew nests on the moor and have radio tagged curlew chicks. This has given us a good picture of which fields they prefer to nest, feed and rest in. We are starting to get a better idea too of nest and chick survival. Of the nine nests we located in 2017, 70% were predated, most at night, and probably by foxes. The 15 or so pairs on the whole moor produced at least eight young, suggesting that our curlew produced over half a chick per pair this year - probably enough to explain why the population is stable, although it wouldn’t take much of a reduction in the number of fledged chicks for this population to be in trouble. In 2018, we found ten nests but only two nests had chicks, and none appear to have survived to fledge. 2018 has clearly been a very poor year for curlew exacerbated by very wet spring weather and mostly day time predation, possibly by stoats rather than foxes.
Although a long-lived species like curlew can withstand one or two bad breeding years, we hope that 2019 will be a better breeding season for them. We intend installing nest cameras on some curlew nests to get a clearer picture of nest predators and will continue to monitor both nest and chick survival. In addition, we are looking at whether we can extend the fencing of gateways to discourage foxes from getting into the heart of the moor where most of the curlew breed: this appears to be helping our breeding cranes on the south side of West Sedgemoor.
Taking weight and wing / bill / leg measurements of a 26 day old curlew chick, West Sedgemoor 2017. Image: Richard Archer, RSPB
While we continue to investigate the West Sedgemoor curlew, we are also working with our tenant farmers to delay hay cutting into mid-July where possible - this seems to be of critical importance in reducing chick mortality, which hide deep in the vegetation when threatened, and would be killed by cutting machinery. Nationally, we are also trying to influence Defra’s future environmental land management programme, to ensure curlew-friendly prescriptions are included in any new environmental package, including payments to encourage farmers with curlew to reinstate hay meadows where this fits into their farming system, and to delay hay cutting until mid July.
If you would like to hear more about our curlew conservation work on the Somerset Levels, please go to our Crane Country Facebook site at https://www.facebook.com/cranecountry. In addition, the RSPB is a member of The Curlew Forum, a group set up to coordinate efforts to protect our remaining lowland breeding curlew population. Details of the work of this group can be found at: http://www.curlewcall.org.