Curlews are birds of significant conservation concern within the UK, with numbers falling sharply this century. As normal, there are a variety of causes for this, starting from lack of habitat and disturbance to unsustainable ranges of predation. Curlews are long-lived birds, so their decline is just not all the time obvious, with pairs returning yearly to their favoured nesting space, regardless of not having fledged any chicks for years.
Right here within the Brecks – an space of poor, sandy soils on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk – now we have a small however essential breeding inhabitants. Colonisation of the Brecks began in 1947, and by the early Nineteen Fifties a secure inhabitants of round 12 pairs had turn into established. They favour the outdated heaths, however a lot of pairs additionally breed on farmland.
Brettenham Heath Nationwide Nature Reserve holds the best density of nesting Curlews within the Brecks. It’s surrounded by a Fox-proof fence
Nobody appears fairly certain what number of pairs there are right now, however my guess can be between 20 and 30. One of many causes they do properly right here is predator management, for Foxes are fairly strictly managed by gamekeepers and landowners within the space. Analysis by the Recreation and Wildlife Conservation Belief has proven that predation by Foxes (of each eggs and chicks) is among the most critical components limiting the success of nesting Curlews.
The return of the Curlews to the nesting heaths is among the first indicators of spring, for the birds begin to transfer again from their wintering grounds on the coast on the finish of February. Initially of this month I checked out Brettenham Heath Nationwide Nature Reserve, an in depth heathland reserve a number of miles north of my residence, and was delighted to each see and listen to my first inland Curlew of the 12 months. The fantastic effervescent tune of the Curlew is among the most stunning of all chicken songs, and is among the the reason why many individuals care so passionately about this chicken.
Yellow IM, the colour-ringed Curlew, on Thetford Heath, March 2024. She was ringed on the Dyfi Estuary in West Wales in 2021
This month I’ve since seen Curlews on two different native heaths: Knettishall (simply two miles from residence) and Thetford Heath (ten miles away). I managed to {photograph} the chicken on Thetford Heath, an apparent feminine together with her very lengthy beak. (Males have noticeably shorter beaks.) What I didn’t discover till I downloaded my images (above and beneath) was the truth that she had been color ringed, with a pink ring on her proper leg, and inexperienced ring above yellow on her left leg. A fast test on the web revealed that there was an on-going color ringing mission happening in Wales, and it appeared almost certainly that this was the place my chicken had been ringed.
Yellow IM within the lengthy grass, her rings now not seen. Her lengthy beak signifies that she is a feminine
An e mail to Tony Cross of the Mid Wales Ringing Group introduced a speedy reply. Sure, he confirmed, it was certainly one of his birds, however may I learn the digits on the chicken’s yellow ring? This proved to be a wrestle, because the chicken was fairly distant after I photographed her, and I solely had a few poor pictures displaying the rings. She had then walked into lengthy grass the place her legs weren’t seen.
We ultimately labored out that her ring was Yellow 1M, revealing that she had been ringed on the RSPB’s Ynys-hir Reserve on the Dyfi Estuary in West Wales in October 2021. (That’s 250 miles from the place I photographed her.) The next Might she was discovered on a nest with 4 eggs at RAF Honnington (4 miles from my residence) by Harry Ewing, an ecologist with Pure England. The heath the place I photographed her is only a quick flight away from Honnington. Although Honnington is a Royal Airforce base with an in depth air area, no flying takes place there anymore, so nesting curlews aren’t a menace to navy plane, as they’re on different RAF bases in East Anglia.
Tony advised me that “the colour-ringing is a part of a mission aiming to check the breeding areas, winter locations and survival charges of Curlews breeding and wintering in Shropshire/Mid Wales. Within the final eight years almost 700 Curlews have been individually colour-marked with re-sightings in Cornwall, Devon, Norfolk, Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire, Shropshire, Denbighshire, Carnarfonshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and Lanarkshire in addition to Counties Cork, Galway, Waterford, Wicklow and Wexford within the Republic of Eire, Jersey, France, Spain, Sweden and Finland. Over 150 headstarted Curlew chicks have additionally been colour-ringed as it’s vital to evaluate the return charges and survival of those captive-reared people too.”
The day earlier than I photographed Yellow 1M I’d learn a captivating article within the weekly journal Capturing Occasions, written by Liam Bell, head gamekeeper on a family-owned property in South Shropshire, not removed from the Welsh border. His piece began with the daring assertion “Our curlew are again. If there’s one other chicken to which landowners and land managers connect such possession, I haven’t heard of it. It’s all the time ‘our curlews are again’ not ‘the curlew are again’. All the time ours.”
He went on to jot down that “Time was when each farm within the dale had nesting curlew, however they’ve slowly disappeared. Or, to be appropriate, have nearly disappeared, however now fortunately have began to make a little bit of a comeback. The will increase on my patch are small, however domestically important and attributable to a number of issues: the best way the person who farms the bottom manages his inventory and his haylage fields; our placing up electrical fences round nesting websites to maintain foxes, badgers, canines and, dare I say it, folks at bay; and the arduous work put in by the keepers on the property to cut back the danger of predation of the eggs and chicks by carrion crows and foxes.”
A Curlew accompanied by a Black-tailed Godwit on the estuary of the River Alde on the Suffolk coast
Predator management is a controversial topic, however there’s little question that with out it, our populations of ground-nesting birds like Curlews and Lapwings will proceed to say no. It’s additionally the rationale why ground-nesting waders, resembling Curlew and Golden Plover, breed way more efficiently on keepered Grouse moors than they do on adjoining unkeepered land. It’s a undeniable fact that opponents of Grouse taking pictures (and there are numerous of them) sometimes ignore.
I shall be preserving an eye fixed open for Yellow IM this spring. The possibilities are that she is going to return to Honnington to breed (Curlews are very web site trustworthy), so let’s hope that she manages to nest efficiently.
