I sometimes think the word 'evocative' is a bit over-used. However, as it means 'bringing strong images, memories or feelings to mind’, I think it can legitimately be used to describe the cry of today's spotlight species, the Curlew (Numenius arquatus). The most familiar call of the Curlew is a long thin note which slides up at the end (sounding a bit like it is saying ‘Cooor-li’, and giving rise to the name).
When I hear this I am brought back to several different scenes from my childhood - walking down Riversdale Road in Liverpool and hearing a curlew calling from the mud in the Mersey estuary at the bottom of the road - clambering on the old ruined pier at our regular holiday destination in the remote west of Ireland in the 1970s - being surprised to see one sitting on a fence post at the edge of a field while visiting my grandparents in an inland part of County Galway, Ireland (I had always thought of them as a coastal bird until that point).
The Curlew (or Eurasian Curlew, to distinguish it from its Far-Eastern, Long-billed and Bristle-thighed cousins, (none of which are found in Europe)) is a large wading-bird with a long, curved bill. Although the bill looks slightly cumbersome, it is what enables the curlew (and all its congeners in the genus Numenius) to feed on worms and other invertebrates deep in the mud of estuaries and coastal flats.
As I discovered as a child, although Curlews can be found in the highest numbers on the coast in the winter, they largely breed inland, often on moorland in places such as the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors. If you are used to seeing them at the seaside, the sight of a large bird doing a display flight over a heathery hillside can puzzle you at first, until you get a look at the long curved beak (open as it calls to mark its territory) and recognise your old friend from the seashore.
Sadly, the Curlews that used to breed near my grandparents' home are now a thing of the past. The species has suffered severe declines all over these islands in recent decades, but nowhere more so than in Ireland which may soon become the first country in Europe to lose Curlew as a breeding bird (https://www.thejournal.ie/curlew-birdwatch-ireland-4827794-Sep2019/). Although they are faring a bit better in the UK they have disappeared from the lowlands where they used to be a widespread breeder and are more or less restricted to the uplands in the summer now.
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| A Eurasian Curlew on the River Tees, Middlesbrough. 1st September 2020 |
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