The Curlew's Cry

Curlews are among our most iconic birds, celebrated in folklore and song. We need to cherish them.

- Mary Colwell

New Year’s Eve 2017. Waves of wind and rain batter our campervan. We’re parked on the North Somerset coast, surrounded by level, sodden farmland and mudflats. Somewhere in the distance a curlew calls, but its cry is whipped away by the wind. “The curlew cannot sleep at all/His voice is shrill above the deep/Reverberations of the storm/ Between the streams he will not sleep,” wrote one medieval monk in Ireland. Known as the storm birds, curlews are even now associated with driving rain off the Atlantic in the minds of many Irish people.

Dawn breaks into quietness. The first rays of light of 2018 are welcomed by a flypast of curlews, calling ‘curlee’ as they head for the fields. A group lands just across the road and begins feeding in the muddy grass. The birds’ long, curved bills probe the substrate, the sensitive tips feeling for earthworms and grubs. They add elegance to a vista of grey and drab green.

It’s best to approach curlews with caution, as they’re flighty and nervous, perhaps the most edgy of all British waders. Stay back about 400m, and move slowly; better still, watch from a parked car. My binoculars can’t pick out any leg rings, so none of this group has been caught and given a unique set of numbers or colours. The birds remain mysterious, like most of the curlews in the UK and Ireland.

Curlews were once numerous breeding birds almost everywhere, yet we still know little about their lives. Perhaps these are locals, spending the winter months close to their breeding grounds on the Somerset Levels, or maybe they’re from further afield, from curlew hotspots in Oxfordshire, the New Forest or the Severn and Avon Vales. But there aren’t many breeding curlews left in southern England – fewer than 300 pairs hang on in small pockets south of a line from Shrewsbury to The Wash.