Shropshire curlew lovers all of a flutter at the arrival of precious chicks

Curlews are Britain’s largest wading bird and were once common across the UK but the population has halved over the last 25 years, plunging it into a risk of extinction and place on the European Red List.

Britain hosts around 25 per cent of the international population, making it of great importance for the survival of the species. Shropshire and Mid Wales are considered to be a 'hotspot' for the survival of the bird.

In one hidden corner of the Shropshire Hills a conservation project called Curlew Country is doing its bit to protect the species by breeding them.

See the live nestcam:

Amanda Perkins, of Curlew Country, said: "We are always excited to see the chicks hatch, a lot of work goes into their close care, but seeing them return to breed in our area as they do is even more exciting and is giving our local population a chance of survival”

"The curlew is a much beloved birth with a distinctive bubbly call. It is seen as a herald of spring."

As a ground nesting bird, the curlew is extremely vulnerable to predation by foxes and badgers as well as not being easy to see by farmers in agricultural vehicles.

Curlew Country started work on the ground in 2015 in a core area of 200km and during its first two active years, nest monitoring revealed that no chicks survived to fully fledge from over 30 nests studied.

The trend toward curlew extinction was being monitored but Amanda said urgent work was needed to put some real action to reverse that decline.

“It turned out that our work would be unintentionally pioneering, but we did not know that at the time,” she said.

Curlew Country now works with more than 80 farmers and land managers on creating safe areas for the bird. There are now 40 pairs of breeding lowland curlew in the area and a nationally significant lowland population.

"Since 2018 some 129 chicks have been released and we now have 31 new chicks on the go with more hatching taking place," said Amanda.

The charity has released a video of the chirpy chicks running around pens built by project officer James Warrington and a team of "brilliant volunteers" who have been hard at work over the past few weeks.

There is even a live webcam of the nesting curlews. And we are told that if you are lucky you may see more chicks being hatched. The YouTube videos are embedded on the website here https://curlewcountry.org/curlew-cam/

To see the chicks in their special pen, visit https://www.facebook.com/CurlewCountryPage/videos/274946394918852

Curlew Country is based in the Shropshire Hills and Powys borders, it works in close local partnership with land managers, volunteers and the wider community to achieve success.

It is recruiting new volunteers to work with its team looking after this year's chicks now.

If you are interested you should email curlewcountry@gwct.org.uk or telephone 01743 291600.