Advice

This page will include advice on all aspects of conservation and study methods:

  • Nest and brood protection (e.g. temporary electric fences).
  • Finding and counting territorial pairs.
  • Estimating productivity.
  • Nest monitoring (e.g. finding nests, temperature loggers, nest cameras).
  • Radiotracking chicks.

How to protect Curlew nests from ground predators by an electrical fence (PDF)
Prepared by Natalie Meyer, NABU, 2019.

Land Management Advice to help support nesting Curlews. (PDF)
Prepared by the RSPB, 2017.

Information and advice for those wanting to help support nesting Curlews on their land. (PDF)
Prepared by Amanda Perkins, Curlew Country Project Manager, Stiperstones and Corndon Hill Country Landscape Partnership Scheme, Shropshire.

Advice on hay cutting on floodplain meadows. (PDF)
Prepared by the Floodplain Meadows Partnership.

Information about conservation of breeding Curlews in Poland, including the use of “head-starting”. (PDF)
Prepared by Jerzy Lewtak, Poland.

“Head-starting” is a conservation technique which involves finding the nests of waders that breed in wet meadows, removing the first clutch of eggs laid, hatching them in an incubator, then returning them to the wild birds for the chicks to be reared. It aims to cut out the huge loss of eggs and young chicks from predators. The technique is being developed at Slimbridge, who have tried it with Black-tailed Godwits in the Fens. They are keen to try it on Curlews; the Curlew Country Project in Shropshire and our Polish colleagues have already tried it with Curlews this year (2017).

Advice on data loggers

There is useful advice about data loggers in this post from Poland:  https://www.curlewcall.org/more-tagged-curlews-from-poland/