Red list threatened bird curlew stages comeback in Yorkshire Dales

“They are indicator species of a healthy habitat, there’s enough insects, there’s a good balance of vegetation. They like the mosaic you get on managed grouse moors, so when keepers see curlews come back in late February it’s a sub-conscious pat on the back that they’re doing a good job.

"They have a special place in keepers’ hearts. Grouse bring the money in, but the waders are the pretty things.”

While the distinctive down-curved billed bird have been on the UK Birds of Conservation Concern Red List since 2015, recent years have seen a reversal of fortune for the wader in parts of the Yorkshire Dales.

A recent survey of Castle Bolton Estate, which includes 6,000 acres of upland grouse moor, revealed a staggering 250 pairs, more than the entire population of curlews south of Birmingham.

The population of curlews in west Arkengarthdale is so high a sustainable harvest of eggs is taken, primarily from vulnerable sites such as near a footpath or areas heavily predated by gulls, for a project led by the Duke of Norfolk to repopulate curlews in the South-East.

Darren, a former gamekeeper, said: “We’ve been taking and incubating 120 curlew eggs off five estates in the Dales and taking them to the South-East for three years and it’s having no detrimental effect.

"Our curlew numbers are pretty amazing, particularly against a backdrop of national declines and localised extinctions. We read about the curlew being in dramatic decline, but in our part of the world the curlew is doing really well. We’ve got curlews that are clamouring for breeding territories because there’s that many of them. We see males trying to steal another male’s girlfriend.”

In addition to bucking the national trend, curlews appears to be changing their traditional migratory patterns. Rather than flying to estuaries like Morecambe Bay over winter an over-wintering population of 500 or more curlews has become established in the Leyburn and Redmire area.

“They are staying in the area because they don’t feel the need to move away, the food supply is copious”, says Darren. “It is something the keepers are hugely proud of because they knowing from the research and ringing returns that these birds are breeding locally. They are Yorkshire curlews, born and bred.”

Such is the comeback that the Castle Bolton Estate landed an accolade from the northern National Parks and National Landscapes Partnership. On receiving the award Lord Bolton said despite the “significant progress” in conserving the curlew in the area it was vital to “continue to use every tool at our disposal to save this precious species”.

As such, the 20-estate YDMG is putting the curlew’s comeback down to significant efforts such as gamekeepers teaming up with farmers, using thermal imaging equipment to locate the ground nests, monitoring fields for predators and fencing off nests.

Darren said: “We know that a curlew is up to four times more likely to breed successfully on a managed grouse moor. Although the typical lifespan is about 12 years, some of these curlews have been known to live up to 30 years.”

Intensive farming practices, such as drainage and reseeding, have been linked to declines in curlew populations.

Darren said the group had noted while changes in habitat and land use impacted on numbers of the birds, if curlews got past the vulnerable period as eggs and chicks on the ground their survival chances soared.

He said the YDMG was working with farmers, mainly in Wensleydale, to report nests and enable the eggs to be rescued, adding: “If there’s a nest in a sileage field nobody wants to run over it, but sometimes it can happen by accident. We’re wanting to work with the farmers so they’re more aware of us being in a position to take action.

"We are really trying to drive home the message that if we can work with the farming community we can find a way to navigate the legislation and put things in place to safeguard as many of the Yorkshire Dales curlews as possible”, he said.

“It has worked really well. We are wanting to take it to the next level and have been talking to Natural England about getting the appropriate licensing in place where we can temporarily remove eggs that are vulnerable so agricultural practices can continue.”