Curlew picture

My friend Chris Sperring sent me this picture he took of a curlew in flight.

Here is a recording of a curlew calling - one of the most beautiful sounds in nature, especially the bubbling call about 17 s in.

Get your own playlist at snapdrive.net!

My friend and blogger Tina Beattie is also photographing and thinking about curlew in Scotland at the moment - thanks for the pictures Tina.

Yeats wrote a rather sad and haunting poem about the cry of the curlew, you can imagine him listening to it over the moors and coastline of Ireland:

He Reproves the Curlew

O curlew, cry no more in the air,

Or only to the water in the West;
Because your crying brings to my mind
passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair
That was shaken out over my breast:
There is enough evil in the crying of wind.

I wrote an article in The Tablet on curlew - Call of the Wild - see Why a Curlew in my information column on the right.