Creative Irish Curlews

There is an extraordinary passage in What the Curlew Said – Nostos Continued by the Irish writer and philosopher John Moriarty.  He describes listening to a curlew calling on a beach in County Kerry.

“What an unearthly aria that call was.

Sometimes I would think, it isn’t a call at all.

But if it isn’t, what is it?

Is it a spontaneity of eternity that has somehow come through into time?

Hearing his voice, a god who had made the curlew would almost instantly want to remake himself as the thing he had made.

Photo by Peter Rutt

Universes he couldn’t call into being with a human voice he could call into being with the voice of a curlew.”

Few other birds evoke such strong images - other worlds, other universes, other ways of being. But when you hear a curlew call, it is not so difficult to understand.  To listen to the clear, sharp “curlee, curlee,” firing like arrows across the horizon, or to the urgent crescendo of bubbling notes rippling out over the bog, is to hear mystical music that touches something deep in our psyche.  John Moriarty is not the first to be enchanted by curlews, and he will not be the last.

The Irish have woven this stilty-legged, crescent-billed wading bird into their lives for as long as there has been myth, music, parable and poetry. They appear in the earliest folktales where they are storm birds, warning fishermen to turn their boats for home, or farmers of oncoming rain.  They are said to have saved St Patrick from drowning when they called him to shore when he was lost at sea in heavy mist. A medieval monk, disturbed from his nightly prayers, wrote, “The Curlew cannot sleep at all/His voice is shrill across the deep/Reverberations of the storm;/Between the streams he will not sleep.” It is a bird of the wild, wet fields and bogs, of windswept estuary and rocky shore. For many it is the quintessential voice of the wilderness. It is also the sound of internal desolation - a broken heart. W B Yeats refers to curlews many times in his writings, most famously in his poem, “He Reproves the Curlew”

O curlew cry no more to 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 the wind.

The cry of the curlew has been used throughout time to expresses fear, mysticism, lost love, joy and wild places. It is a malleable, shape-shifting call that has ignited many creative sparks.  It is one of the great gifts of the natural world that in its variety of colour, shape and sound it helps us to express the intangible and to give voice to inner feelings.  The creatures and landscapes of the earth are part of our creativity and fundamental to a vibrant culture.  “It seems to me,” said David Attenbrough, “that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.”

It would be a tragedy then, to allow the Curlew, a bird that has provided so much inspiration, to slip away. If Ireland allows the curlew to fall silent, it loses so much more than just another species, it loses part of Irish heritage. In the late 1980s there were around 5,000 curlews breeding throughout the country, they were a common sight and anyone over the age of 40 will remember them.  The first national Curlew survey was completed by NPWS in 2017 and there are now less than 130 pairs left. That is an astonishing decline. It is not an exaggeration to say that Curlew are facing extinction in Southern Ireland in less than 10 years. That sentence is almost too hard to write, it sounds like extreme fear-mongering - too exaggerated.  Yet the figures are stark.  The graph of Curlew population plotted against time plummets downwards and will hit zero very soon indeed. And this has happened on our watch.

Curlew on Malahide beach

Ignorance is no excuse in law, but it seems to be in conservation. When I walked across Ireland, Wales and Scotland in 2016 to raise awareness about the decline of the Curlew, I was astonished how few people knew what was happening to this once common bird.  And that included nature lovers and bird watchers.   Our interconnected, info-rich world is somehow failing when it comes to connecting us with the life that lives all around. How do we bridge that gap?  What will energise us to take an interest and to act? Because if we don’t, then one day very soon we will look out over bog and field and realise the curlew sings no more.

The disappearance of curlews is due to a perfect storm of inappropriate forestry, draining of wet land, intensification of fields, increase in predators such as foxes and crows and the mass stripping of bogs. There are no easy solutions, but there are ways forward that are being explored by the Curlew Task Force, set up in January 2017. The Curlew Task Force is a unique working group of farmers, conservationists, foresters, turf cutters, academics and the NPWS, who are determined to find ways to work together to help Curlew across Ireland.  As there are so few nests left in the Republic, time is of the essence.  The Curlew Conservation Programme is the primary vehicle for enacting conservation measures on the ground, where they matter most. Some nests will have electric fences erected around them to protect the eggs from foxes.  Increased fox and crow control in the nesting season will also give the chicks a greater chance of survival.  Cooperation with turf cutters and farmers to leave areas where birds are nesting until the chicks are fledged will give the birds added safety.  Vegetation can also be managed to give the curlews the varied heights of sward they need for nesting and feeding. Eggs are often laid in long grass for protection but growing chicks need to feed in shorter grass with lots of insects. In some bogs, drainage ditches will be blocked to re-wet the ground, which curlews prefer for nesting, and softer ground is easier to probe by their long, sensitive bills. Agreements with foresters will be sought to protect nesting and foraging sites from plantations.

And while the land managers and professional conservationists do their work, the rest of us must learn to listen out for and to love the Curlew again.  Understanding what is happening to them is vital to halt the decline. Raising awareness about where they breed and what they need has to be increased. We need to teach our children to recognise their beautiful calls, and to tell them the stories and poems that celebrate this birds’ long association with culture. We need to go out on a warm summer evening and revel in that fluty trill - that sound of the Irish summer – that has inspired poets and mystics through time.

Ireland has a long and rich connection to nature, the roots are there, they only need be nurtured once again for Ireland to be truly green and full of life.  Bringing back the Curlew from the brink of extinction as a breeding bird will be a huge positive step towards a brighter future for all of life on the Emerald Isle.

World Curlew Day is on April 21, my book Curlew Moon is out on April 19, published by William Collins.

Oh - and the fabulous World Curlew Day logo was designed by my cousin Nicola Duffy from Letterkenny!

Curlew Song

I gave a talk at New Networks for Nature conference last November, a précis of the talk is here.  Listening were a folk singing duo called Barron Brady who had provided the music for the event.  Ros has a clear, intense voice and Simon plays the guitar beautifully.  I talked about the role religions have in the conservation movement and used curlews, not as an example of creatures in decline, but as a bird that can be viewed in many different ways.

A curlew can be Numenius arquata to the scientifically minded, it can be "a thought of God" as Thomas Merton would have said.  They can be seen as specific creation of Allah, or as a spark of light from the flame of Lord Shiva.  They could even just be a brown bird with a long nose and a beautiful bubbling call.  All are valid, all have a place at the table.

After the conference Ros contacted me to ask more about curlews and I told her the story of St Bueno's prayer book being rescued from the waves by a curlew.  St Bueno then supposedly blessed the bird and said it should be forever protected.  That blessing worked well for a long time, but needs a refresh now.  St Bueno's feast day is April 21st, the day I set off on my 500 mile walk.

Well, today Barron Brady sent me this haunting song.  Thank you to them, its a fitting tribute to a fabulous bird.

500 miles for curlew

Please help spread the word about my walk for curlew, beginning April 21st.

The Curlew Walk - Flyer

How faith can help nature

In November 2015 I gave a talk at New Networks for Nature on how important world religions are for conservation. Here is a summary of the talk.

Curlew are wonderful birds that I have loved for ever. It is their almost comical small head, large bill and gangly legs that make me smile and their haunting call that evokes many feelings.

Copyright Andreas Trepte

Their Latin name is Numenius arquata.  I tried to find out why but couldn't, not at first anyway, but I did find out that Numenius of Apamea (in Syria) was a rather splendid second century philosopher who wanted to restore the ideas of Plato. He believed (putting it very simply) that living things couldn't be totally explained by referring to matter - which was cold and lifeless - or by the elements - which were in a constant state of change, Numenius believed that life must have some kind of spirit of the divine to animate it.

It actually turns out that Numenis is in fact related to the new moon, a reference to the shape of the curlew's bill, and arquata means shaped like a bow. So the Latin name for curlew is defined by its beautifully curved bill.  But I was happy to go with the philosopher because he makes an important point.

For much of the world religion plays a very important role in people's lives.  It is only in western Europe that we feel faith is personal and not to be talked about in public.  For the rest of the world religion defines individuals and communities, even whole countries.  This is a pie chart showing the percentage of different religions worldwide.

It is obvious that Christianity and Islam make up more than half the world's population .  Here is a map of the Christian world.

Christian countries are guardians of the Amazon, the Boreal forests, the Congo rainforest, sub Saharan Africa, the Arctic - to name a few of the precious ecosystems on earth.  Most of N America, the most powerful country on earth, is Christian. 

Here is a map of the strongholds of the Islamic faith.

The Indonesian rainforest is purely in the hands of Islamic countries, as well as most of N Africa.  The two biggest religions on earth are in charge of the world's most diverse ecosystems.

It is also a fact that 50% of North Americans say they trust their religious leaders more than any other group (gallup poll) and a BBC World Service survey showed that 75% of people throughout Africa trusted religious leaders over and above governments, NGOs and other civil leaders.

Religions also provide an interconnected group of people that spread over the earth, bound together across race, colour and political boundaries.  They are are also well established with roots stretching back through generations, tying people to the past as well as providing hope for the future.  All religions come with a sense of greatness outside of humanity, of sacrifice for the common good, of awe and wonder, an understanding of obedience and a sense of the long-term that goes beyond human comprehension. 

Perhaps a good example of this in poetry is God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins.  Hopkins was a Jesuit priest.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings

In fact many of the most renowned environmentalists/writers/poets have deeply religious roots, to varying degrees.  People like Wendell Berry, John Clare, David Henry Thoreau, Gilbert White, John Muir, Thomas Berry, Thomas Merton, William Wordsworth, Robert Frost. These are just a few I like very much.

But what we tend to do in western environmental circles is talk in terms of science and data, other ways are less important or soft - embarrassing even. This is a shame because all have a place at the conservation table - increasingly so.

So whether you see a curlew as a bird with a long nose that makes a lovely noise, or a "thought of God" as Thomas Merton (monk) would have said, or a divine spark of Lord Shiva or a sentient being struggling in the cycle of birth and re-birth, or a special creation of Allah - or simply Numenius arquata  - any of these are valid and all are important.

As we find ourselves in an increasingly religious world we need to embrace different ideas and points of view, because nature needs us to do so.

St Bueno and the Curlew

              

                        St Beuno and the Eurasian curlew ("Eurasian Curlew" by Andreas Trepte)

In the 7th C AD the grand old welsh St Bueno was sailing between  Llanddwyn and Clynnog when he dropped his prayer book onto the sea.  Suddenly a curlew swooped down, scooped up the book and took it to the shore where it was laid out to dry on rocks.  When St Bueno arrived he was so grateful he blessed the curlew and prayed for its protection.  Hence forth the nest of this most lovely of birds is very difficult to find.

In fact today in Wales it is even more difficult to find as it seems the prayer of St Bueno has run out of steam.  According to a report from the BTO this month "Curlew is one of the upland species that has shown the greatest decline (-49%) and is now considered too be the UK's highest conservation priority." Declines are particularly evident in southern Ireland and Wales.  See this excellent blog by Graham Appleton.

How can this be?  In Ireland curlew were legally shot during November but due to the drastic fall in numbers (2000 breeding pairs in 2001, less than 200 today) that was banned in 2012.  Habitat loss?  Disturbance by dogs then predation of the eggs by crows? Is this a bird out of time?

What can be done?  I might walk from Norfolk to West Ireland dressed like a curlew to raise awareness - and hopefully funds.  Anyone like to join me for sections?

I'd like to walk from possibly Westport in Co Mayo to the Wash, taking in Aberffraw to visit St Bueno's church in Anglesey.

Anyone know who could help make a curlew costume? I don't want it to be whacky, rather more beautiful symbolising what curlews have given is in terms of poetry, literature, music and art. A clothes designer who can work with something waterproof and sturdy to withstand rain and wind!

Any help gratefully received.

Tiree

Tiree is a stunning island.  First impressions are muted - it seems very flat and the houses dotted erratically over the landscape, more lowland Scandinavia or the Netherlands than Scotland.  But the drive from the ferry to the campsite is a continuous introduction to wonder.  First of all a man suddenly stopped his car in the middle of the road and tried to shoo a young tern into the grass, all the while being dive bombed by screaming adults.  Then a hare bounded alongside drawing the eye to the glory that is the carpet of machair.

A riot of colour in miniature - small plants have a big punchy presence when you take a ground level view.  Shrink yourself down to a few inches high and talk a walk - you could be wandering through a William Morris print.  Yellows, pinks, whites, purples dot the canvas, the soft background hues provided by the grasses, the bold look-at-me shouty plants provided by the ragworts and bigger orchids.  It is beautiful and no artist could ever design anything as lovely.

And to top it all the birds appear to add a varied musical score.  Wheeling, alarmist flocks of lapwings, chunky, honking flocks of greylag geese, grating corncrakes, highly strung oyster catchers and my favourite of all time - the elegantly gawky curlew.  I've never seen so many curlew. They peer out of the grass, they strut along the fields, they stand lonely as a cloudy curlew on the rocks by the sea.  They crane their necks to see if they should be moving on and then suddenly go, crying and bubbling.   Curlew are  a kit bag of unlikely parts but so adapted to wild, windswept moors, coasts, estuaries and dank fields.  I watched them whenever I could.

On a bike ride a female hen harrier flew very close to the road.  I jammed on my brakes, causing my son to do a front wheel handstand and explode with a stream of choice language.

Grey seals often popped up to check out the action - they look like giant beer bottles bobbing in the sea.  We never saw the illusive otters though, despite being told they are pretty common.

I loved Tiree as a place to think, walk, cycle, run, watch wildlife, practice juggling, fall off windsurfers (me) or shoot the waves (my eldest son) or collapse after off-roading (my youngest son).

I do have a couple of pieces of advice though.  If you plan on camping and decide to spend a lot of money on an extension to a small campervan, make sure the attachment that attaches said extension to said van is the right size.  And if it is blowing a hooley (which it often is) make sure you bag your spot in the campervan first, otherwise you spend the night sleeping in the equivalent of a very loud crisp packet.

curlew coincidence

Strange but true - my favourite bird is a curlew and I was bought up in the district of Staffordshire Moorlands.  And guess what - the emblem is a curlew.  Spooky!  Anyone know why - you rarely see them there now.

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.