Decline of Eurasian Curlew
The closure of Bord na Mona peat bogs to peat cutting made headlines, although it had been forewarned. The rejection of planning permission to build apartments in a school playing field in Raheny, north Dublin, similarly made headlines. Behind both those news items lies a sombre fact; the decline and threatened extinction of the Eurasian curlew.
The curlew, Crotach in Irish, has been part of the Irish countryside forever, nesting in peatland, heather and marginal farmland, stalking tidal shores and floodplains. The folk name derives from its long whistling call of curlee, curlew. This large wading bird is mottled brown, with a distinguishing feature; its long curved bill, which gives the species its Latin name, Numenius arquata, from the curve of the crescent new moon and an archer’s bow. The chicks are born with a short straight bill which is immediately used to pick up insects. Birds evolved along two tracks; altricial and precocial offspring. The first type need to stay in the nest and be fed by parents until they fledge and learn to feed themselves. The second, our curlew chicks, are ready to go soon after hatching. Most water birds fall into this category as their nest on the ground could be flooded and the chicks are exposed to predation.
Speaking of water birds; during the days of hard and fast Catholicism, rural folks sometimes considered a water bird to be equivalent to fish and so included it on Friday’s meatless diet. This must have made a change from salted cod.
Curlew, locally called courlie, calloo, marsh hen, was an accepted part of the diet for generations. Why not? It was free, costing nothing but time and the materials needed to shoot or net it, and there were plenty of them. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Today there are under two hundred breeding pairs known in Ireland.
After shooting the curlew ceased, the numbers partially recovered. While shooting this bird ceased to be legal in Great Britain in 1981, Northern Ireland only followed suit in 2011, and Ireland did so in 2012. This matters more because Ireland is a wintering point for many British birds, which were being shot during their flight for survival. Once the birds arrived at a nature reserve they were safe and could be counted, providing a good record of populations. BirdWatch Ireland, which has campaigned for preservation of many Irish species and birds of passage, tallied fewer than 200 nesting pairs in the whole country in 2012. They thanked the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan, then Fine Gael TD for Kerry North and Kerry North-West Limerick, who imposed the shooting ban, but warned that intensified agriculture and changes in land use were driving the bird to extinction. In 2018 BirdWatch Ireland declared that numbers were critically low, 120 nesting pairs.
North Bull Island is the first reserve birds from England and Wales might meet. This sandbank and lagoons formed naturally after Captain William Bligh, of the Mutiny on the Bounty fame, was placed in charge of making Dublin Port safe for shipping in 1801, and ordered the North Bull Wall constructed to keep the channel free of shifting sand. The resulting accumulation of sand became Ireland’s first bird sanctuary in 1931 and is now a Special Area of Conservation (SAC).
This UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve, which is home to seals, hares, orchids, bats and birds of prey, provides shelter and feeding for waterbirds both resident and migratory. On 13th March 2019 no curlews were recorded by observers on the North Bull Island Biodiversity website; one whimbrel, Numenius phaeopus, was sighted. This is the smaller relative of the curlew. By comparison 290 knots were counted, 80 sanderlings and 1500 dunlins, all wading birds, as well as handfuls of birds related to ducks like teal, shoveller, great crested grebe. The same website recorded 24 curlews in May 2018 and 72 in July 2018. However, when I interviewed Niall Hatch of Birdwatch Ireland, he did not find these figures hopeful.
“During those months, ideally there really should be no Curlews at Bull Island: they should be on their breeding grounds, nesting and looking after chicks, not already at their wintering quarters. The birds that were recording during these months are most likely failed breeders that have either abandoned their nests in Scandinavia or other parts of northern Eurasia and decided to migrate south early or which never migrated away to breed in the first place, possibly due to lack of fitness.”
Birdwatch Ireland conducts its own scientific studies, the Irish Wetland Bird Survey (I-WeBS).
I visited Bull Island a few times during March 2019 and photographed several bird species, from common scoter to black-tailed godwit, but saw neither curlew nor whimbrel.
Nest sites for waders have greatly been encroached on by farmland during the past few decades. The changeover from late summer hay cutting to frequent silage cutting, increasingly mechanised farmwork, and reclamation of marginal land for grazing or tree planting, all reduce the area once given over to wildlife.
Like the shy bittern, dwelling in reeds, or the pipit, nesting in long grass, the curlew finds fewer homes and the nest is prone to unnoticed destruction. Predators have been on the increase too; with no wolves or bears to keep their numbers in check the smaller carnivores like foxes, badgers, weasels, stoats and rats proliferate and hunt out eggs and chicks. Another major predator is the hooded crow, also called grey crow. This bird likes to sit on a tree limb and watch for small creatures, carrion, or nesting birds. One controversial measure is for bird societies to ask gun clubs to keep down the number of predators during the breeding season. By adding measures like putting an electric fence around a river island to stop enterprising foxes, the odds can be swung in favour of the birds.
When in large numbers, curlews will rise and mob a predator, but if only one nesting pair remains in an area that tends not to work. After the eggs hatch the precocial chicks run the risk of being picked off while they forage, or drown if the river floods while they cannot fly. Few have been observed making it to fledging age.
The corncrake has been the subject of preservation measures, such as the government compensating farmers for later harvests. Similarly, the closing of Bord na Mona’s (BnM) bogs to peat harvesting can only do good. Established by the Turf Development Act in 1946, the company transformed the isolated midlands into a community driven economic benefit for the nation, producing a fuel supply for nearby electricity plants, the iconic peat briquette for householders and moss peat for gardeners.
This video highlights the work being undertaken by the Irish Peatland Conservation Council and the National Parks and Wildlife Service of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht for breeding Curlew in Ireland.
I visited the Bog of Allen a few times over the decades, seeing generations of machinery right to the flat brown horizon, blades scraping the surface inch off the bog, shoving it into rows to dry and scooping it into little peat-powered trainloads on BnM’s own tracks. I took the train myself on a guided tour of the history and nature of the peatlands. Lichen, sundew and bog cotton flourish in the acidic, nutrient poor ground. The worked-out bogs have been restored to lakes, which they were originally before the layers of silt, leaf matter and sphagnum moss accumulated. Raised bogs emerged from the lakes, moss growing on top of dead matter and soaking up the water. Blanket bogs crept up the sides of hills, the moss absorbing carbon as well as water. The sponge effect is now required to help Ireland’s regularly flooding landscape be more resilient to climate change. BnM whose new mission is to take the lead in countering climate change, highlights their greening effort on their website.
“We are decarbonising and building a new, more sustainable business and midlands economy,” they state. The images on the site are now of solar panels and wind turbines in a flat bog landscape. Peat sales to householders and gardeners will be replaced by renewable biomass products, from garden compost to compressed wood shaving logs.
St Anne’s Park in Raheny, north Dublin, hosted a green recycling centre where householders and small firms could pay to bring anything compostable, at the turn of the Millennium. Dublin City Council composted the greenwaste and sold mulch for gardening. Local householders campaigned to get the centre closed on the basis that it was too popular. They were supported by TD Ivor Callely, who was later jailed in 2014 for fraudulently claiming mobile phone expenses by submitting two fake invoices to the Dail, having had a judgement of €11 million issued against him in 2013. One resident had a breathing issue and others found dust on their windowsills, while cars and vans used the road to the centre. As a halfway measure, the Parks Department stopped composting on site, giving BnM the contract to take the greenwaste off site to be shredded and composted. The park site closed in 2007 in response to the continued local pressure.
The greenwaste was originally brought to Teagasc’s Kinsealy Research Centre in north Dublin by BnM, where the garden chippings and lawn cuttings were trialled for mixing with peat to dilute it, while retaining the same quality of compost for gardeners. Impetus came from the wish of the B&Q chain of hardware stores to reduce the amount of natural peat it sold. BnM started with the aim of reducing the peat content in compost by 90% and Kilberry in Athy, Kildare, was designated as the location for the new Kilberry Compost Plant. During 2004–2005 large scale trials occurred with the inclusion of brewers’ grounds and wood industry byproducts added to the lesser proportion of peat. The bagged compost medium now goes to B&Q for sale to the public.
The peatlands are now regarded by BnM, as well as naturalists, as “distinctive and valuable habitats” to quote BnM’s website. To protect the wading, nesting curlew, and to store rather than burn greenhouse gases, the energy extraction element of the bog had to be closed. Powergen is the new name for BnM’s wholesale power production from wind and solar, as well as a new biomass burning plant to replace the peat burner at Edenderry, Co Offaly. New wind turbine farms require planning permission, may disturb locals, and may also disturb nesting birds or pose a real danger to them in the air. Improved visibility, bird-friendly vanes are being made now as wind farms around the world count the feathered cost of collisions with birds.
75% of biomass burned in 2009 was woodchip sourced from forests and sawmills, another 12% sawdust. The peat burner plants were powered down and workers worried about being laid off. Jobs have been a central tenet of BnM since its inception however, and the midlands more than anywhere need the work. Renewable energy, composting and nature tourism will be the jobs of the future.
Raheny was embroiled in another major issue during the autumn of 2018, when the High Court heard a concession from An Bord Pleanala that it had made an error in granting permission for over 100 houses and 432 apartments to be built on former St Paul’s School playing fields which sit in the middle of St Anne’s Park. This park was originally owned by the Guinness family. The Vincentian Fathers had bought these lands from Dublin City Council for approx. €4000 in 1953, and sold them to a developer Crekav Trading Ltd for a reported €17 million in 2015. With development permission the land value would skyrocket; the Irish Times has estimated it would reach €80 million. The scheme had been rushed through under fast-track planning legislation which meant it had bypassed the Council. An Bord Pleanala admitted the permission had not taken into account the EU Birds Directive on wintering birds, such as Brent geese and other endangered species, which regularly feed from the grasslands.
While studying at Whitehall College during the winter of 2010–11, I became familiar with the sight of a flock of a dozen curlews, feeding on worms on the sports fields at the rear. Curlews need a lot of space so they can stay a long way from predators. This same flock, migrants over for the winter, regularly enjoyed dining at sports fields belonging to Ardscoil Rí alongside the Malahide Road at Marino each year. During the winter of 2018–19, the Marino field was bulldozed. I have not seen those curlews since. While the Ardscoil Rí website doesn’t provide an explanation for the sea of shovelled mud and machinery, it does mention playing another school, St Benildus, on Astroturf. Curlews don’t have to face apartment block threats on every playing field, but the installation of Astroturf is quite enough to deprive them of feeding grounds.
Mary Colwell described in her book Curlew Moon (2018, William Collins), how she spent a month walking around the British Isles in search of curlews and those who care about them. The numbers of birds everywhere were vanishingly small. Lough Ree in Ireland’s midlands once hosted flocks; Mary didn’t see any. The regularly flooded Shannon Callows were unsuitable for agriculture and held, in 1954, “the great Curlew breeding ground” according to Birds Of Ireland by Kennedy, Ruttledge and Scroope; Mary found that in 2017 only ten pairs had been counted. She saw one bird. BirdWatch Ireland had erected an electric fence right around one river island to protect the various ground nesting birds; mainly lapwing and redshank as well as curlew. However, the increasingly frequent and heavy Shannon floods, caused by extra rainfall due to climate change, had wiped out clutches and chicks.
Mary Colwell could not believe the devastation caused by turf cutting, both mechanical and small scale. Illegal cutting disturbed nesting birds on a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) where she was told by local birdwatcher Paddy Sheridan that red grouse and grey partridge had been lost in the 1990s, and the curlews were now unable to raise chicks. At an agricultural college Mary found that the students were not being given any information whatsoever about Ireland’s natural heritage and preserving wildlife; just about improving marginal land and increasing yields.
Nor is Ireland alone; Mary was told at a Curlew workshop in the UK that Wales has fewer than 400 pairs left. These large birds live to their teens, but only raise one clutch a year. If that clutch can’t provide replacement birds, when the parents are gone, they are all gone. Europe may still have curlews elsewhere, but their numbers are also shrinking and the genetic diversity lost would be irreplaceable.
Waterbirds around the world are severely threatened by habitat destruction, as researcher Deborah Cramer learned on her journey from top to bottom of the Americas following the migratory Red Knots. The Narrow Edge (2015, Yale University Press).
Moderate hope may be taken from the fact that since December 2017 rural projects are being funded by the European Development Fund, including a curlew preservation project shown in the above media clip from the Irish Peatland Conservation Council. With improved public education and, we can hope, a more enlightened attitude from farmers to match that of the newly sober Bord na Mona, the curlew might manage to survive as an irreplaceable part of Ireland’s cultural heritage. So go easy on the installation of Astroturf.
See a multimedia version of this story on Adobe Spark.
References
Bibliography
Balmer, E. A Field Guide to the Birds of the British Isles (2006) London: Parragon.
Colwell, M. Curlew Moon (2019) London: William Collins.
Cramer, D. The Narrow Edge (2015) London: Yale University Press.
Gooders, J. Birds of Britain and Europe (2001) London: Kingfisher.
Kennedy, P.G., Ruttledge, R. F., Scroope, C.F. Birds of Ireland (1954) Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.
Pye, M. The Edge of the World: How the North Sea made us who we are (2015) London: Penguin Books.
Richards, A. J. British Birds: A Field Guide (1979) London: David & Charles.
Interview
Hatch, N. July 15, 2019.
Websites
BirdWatch Ireland (2017) Curlew. Accessed April 4, 2019.
Ibid. IWeBS Report.
https://birdwatchireland.ie/app/uploads/2019/03/2015-16-I-WeBS-Report-Final.pdf
Ibid (January 27, 2017) Work to begin to save the curlew from extinction. Accessed April 4, 2019.
https://www.birdwatchireland.ie/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=Guv91orEGso%3D&tabid=1318
Change.org (January 30, 2018) Dublin City Council say no to building on St Paul’s playing fields at St Anne’s Park Raheny. Accessed April 4, 2019.
Cooney, T. ed. (January 1, 2019) North Bull Island Bird Report 2018.
Accessed April 4, 2019.
http://www.bullislandbirds.com/images/uploaded/NorthBullIslandBirdReport2018.pdf
Curlew Forum (2019) Call of the Curlew. Accessed April 4, 2019.
Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (July 2015) The Birds Case. Accessed April 4, 2019.
https://www.chg.gov.ie/app/uploads/2015/09/birds_case_pom_july2015.pdf
Dublin City Council (2007) Dublin City Biodiversity Action Plan 2007–2010. Accessed April 4, 2019.
http://www.noticenature.ie/files/Dublin%20Biodiversity%20Plan%20(draft).pdf
Dublin City Council (2019) North Bull Island. Accessed April 4, 2019.
Friends of the Irish Environment (2019) Papers. Accessed April 4, 2019.
https://www.friendsoftheirishenvironment.org/eu/44-papers-today/waste/7738-
Irish Independent Lifestyle (August 23, 2009) Rare book of a pioneer birdman. Accessed April 15, 2019.
https://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/rare-book-of-a-pioneer-birdman-26560419.html
Irish Peatlands Conservation Council (2019) Homepage Accessed April 15, 2019.
Ibid, (2019) Action for Curlew Accessed April 15, 2019.
http://www.ipcc.ie/a-to-z-peatlands/action-for-curlew/
Ibid, (2019) Bog of Allen Nature Centre Visitor Guide & Map Accessed April 15, 2019.
http://www.ipcc.ie/visitor-attraction/bog-of-allen-nature-centre/
Kelly, F., Gallagher, C. (July 28, 2014) Ivor Callely sentenced to five months in prison. Accessed April 4, 2019.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/ivor-callely-sentenced-to-five-months-in-prison-1.1880454
Murtagh, P. (n.d.) Bull Island & the Dublin Bay Biosphere. Accessed April 4, 2019.
https://dublin.ie/living/articles/bull-island-the-dublin-bay-biosphere/
O’Faolain, A. (June 28, 2018) Planners admit ‘error’ in approving development at St Anne’s Park. Accessed April 4, 2019.
ResearchGate (August 9, 2016) North Bull Island UNESCO Biosphere Periodic Review. Accessed April 4, 2019.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312033782_North_Bull_Island_Bird_Report_2016
Media files
Irish Peatland Conservation Council Action for Ireland’s Breeding Curlew. (Oct 10, 2018) YouTube. Accessed April 25, 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwNtGGSWf0c
Grieco, F. Eurasian Curlew Numenius Arquata. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/375237. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Accessed April 25, 2019.
http://www.curlewcall.org/media-library/sounds/
Sample, G. Curlew calls. © Geoff Sample, www.wildsong.co.uk. Accessed April 25, 2019.
http://www.curlewcall.org/media-library/sounds/
Photos
O’Beara, C. North Bull Island nature reserve
Black tailed godwits Limosa limosa
March 21, 2019.
Greater Black backed gulls Larus marinus
Common scoter Melanitta nigra
Dunlin Calidris alpina
Brent Geese Branta bernicla
Brent Geese in flight Branta bernicla
Black tailed godwits Limosa limosa
March 23, 2019.
