Eurasian Curlew

Identification

The largest wader in Europe: a long-legged, long-billed bird standing 50–60 cm tall. Its plumage is a quiet patchwork of grey-brown streaks and buff notches that disappears against mud and dead grass, but two features give it away. The bill is long and evenly down-curved, and it is noticeably longer in females than in males. In flight, a bold white rump and lower back flash above the dark tail. Head-on, look for the pale eye-ring and the dark streaks running along the crown and nape. On the ground it strides slowly and deliberately rather than teetering like the smaller waders.

Curlews feed by pushing that bill deep into soft mud and sand, using sensitive nerve endings at the tip to locate worms, crabs and molluscs without ever seeing them; prey is swallowed whole or dragged up and shaken apart. Outside the breeding season they gather in loose flocks on estuaries and coastal flats, roosting in tight groups on the last unflooded spits at high tide. Breeding birds hold territory on moorland and wet pasture, scraping a nest into the grass, and the male's display flight carries a rising, bubbling song that gave the species its English name.

The easiest time to see one is winter, at high tide on an estuary, when birds are pushed up onto saltmarsh edges and the fields just behind the sea wall. In spring, dawn or dusk on upland moorland is the moment for the song flight, though you will usually hear the 'cur-lee' call long before the bird itself appears. On open mud they often stand still for long stretches, so a telescope saves a lot of walking.