Message from Stephen Martin: You may have heard about the disastrous wildfire over Darwen Moor, near Bolton, Lancashire, (2.5km²) last weekend (30/31 May). Survey work has always established a good density of breeding Curlew in that section of the West Pennine Moors (up to 6 pairs/km²). The loss of an […]
Asham Meadow is a traditional hay meadow along the River Avon, near the village of Eckington in Worcestershire. It is one of the few remaining ‘Lammas Meadows’ still active in the country. Lammas Meadows are operated on a strip system that goes back to the Middle Ages, with different owners […]
Richard Tyler has taken some fascinating pictures of flies’ eggs on a hatching Curlew egg – not an occurrence that is widely noted in the literature. He and others have been monitoring a Curlew’s nest on the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire – in itself a rare event, of which more below. […]
Nowadays most nesting Curlews in Worcestershire are found in the floodplain of the Severn and Avon, where they breed in hay meadows with a late hay cut, which generally allows them to bring off their chicks before the hay is brought in. But today’s floodplain nesters probably originated in the […]
With most of us in lockdown, Curlews are getting on with the business of nesting! The Curlew Country project in Shropshire which has been working with local people and farmers on Curlew conservation for the last five years, has re-established its Curlew camera on a nest in 2020. You can […]
Every year the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), on behalf of a cluster of conservation bodies – the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, the RSPB and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust – organizes the Wetland Bird Survey, which is the principal scheme for monitoring the UK’s wintering waterbird populations. The scheme […]
In a post on this website dated 19 September 2018, we reported on what was at the time only the third record of a ringed Curlew moving between UK and Poland. The bird had been colour-ringed on the Usk estuary in south Wales in January 2016 and photographed on its […]
Happy World Curlew Day to one and all! (For background on why 21 April is World Curlew Day, see earlier reports on the www.curlewcall.org website, and in particular the notes on St Beuno). Unfortunately, few updates on fieldwork are available, as most people have been staying at home, and all […]
Exmoor, like Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor, is an area of southwest England traditionally associated with breeding Curlews and their haunting calls in wild open country. Previous reports on the Curlewcall website have referred to dramatic decreases in breeding Curlews – almost to complete extinction – on Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor, […]
