and wild,
Born far on the wings of a gale.
And still, as I rest by the door of my cot,
Thy voice can youth’s feelings renew;
And strangely I’m tempted to envy thy lot,
Thou wild-noted, wailing curlew.4
Glenwherry is an anglicised version of the original Irish name Gleannfaire, translated as ‘valley of the watching’. The original reason for this name is lost in time, but it is apt once again thanks to the RSPB project based here to closely observe the area’s breeding curlews as part of its Curlew Recovery Programme, led by Sarah Sanders. They recorded forty-four pairs in 2016, and by today’s standards that makes Glenwherry a hotspot for curlews in Northern Ireland.
A key part of the Curlew Recovery Programme is the snappily named Trial Management Project (TMP). Despite the corporate terminology, the TMP is a practical, five-year project concentrating on six upland areas (of which Glenwherry is one) spread throughout northern England, Scotland, North Wales and Northern Ireland. Each site consists of two roughly 10 square-kilometre plots situated close to each other. One plot will see all the action – habitat management, predator control, special grazing regimes and so on – whereas on the other site it will be business as usual with no special measures. In the active site, in Glenwherry, the RSPB is working with farmers to thin out rushes and create better feeding and nesting areas by targeted grazing of cattle. Some shrubs and trees are also being removed so that predators such as hooded crows can’t use them as lookout posts to spot eggs and chicks. Foxes and crows will also be controlled in the active plot, but not in the control site. At the end of the five-year period, hopefully, a clearer idea will have emerged about what kind of management is needed to stabilise or even reverse the decline of upland curlews.
When I visited Glenwherry in April 2016 it was only year two of the TMP, so too early for any results, but the project hasn’t come a day too soon. The last thirty years have been catastrophic for Northern Irish curlews, and many other farmland birds. Back in 1986 a survey found 5,000 pairs of breeding curlews throughout the province. By 2015 their numbers had crashed to fewer than 500 pairs, and probably closer to 250. That is a decline of over 90 per cent. The cause? Changes in farming. Agriculture dominates Northern Ireland, three-quarters of the land is farmed. It is the country of toil and soil. Prior to the 1970s, small mixed farms, with both arable farming and livestock, were widespread. They were family-run affairs that were, to use the jargon, ‘extensive’ in character. Extensive (as opposed to ‘intensive’) means low chemical input in terms of fertiliser and pesticides, low stocking density and lower yield per acre. A seven-year rotation system was used for crops such as oats, potatoes, and pasture for hay. Over the decades that followed, these smaller farms have been amalgamated into larger, specialised, intensive businesses, centred mainly on livestock. There are now 1.7 million cows in Northern Ireland providing both milk and meat, compared to a million in 1965, and over the same time frame land given over to crops declined by two-thirds. Fields that once grew food for people are now laid to grass for livestock.
In 1965 cows were fed through the winter months on hay, 90 per cent of which was cut in August. By 1995 hay was replaced by silage – a method of growing food for cows by frequently cutting grass and storing it anaerobically under large sheets of black plastic. If they can produce enough grass, farmers can now feed cows throughout the year. Soil is ‘enhanced’ by the addition of fertiliser and the grass is sprayed with pesticides. By using super-productive varieties such as rye grass, larger quantities can be grown and then cut as often as every three weeks from April onwards and stored in silos. The dairy sector is particualry important. In 1965 there were 196,000 dairy cows in Northern Ireland; today, 312,000 cows produce milk and cheese, two-thirds of which is exported. The dairy industry is vital to the economy of Northern Ireland – and it depends on silage.
Patrick G. McBride was a farmer in the Glens of Antrim for much of the twentieth century. His memoir, Where the Curlew Flies, describes the old ways of doing things. He celebrates the daily joys of working on the land, as well as being realistic about the hard labour of farming with hand tools and horses. Hay was made with rakes and forks, and ‘meadow hay’ on wet ground was always cut with a scythe. In his lifetime, slow-paced, hands-on farming was replaced by fast-paced machines that could harvest multiple cuts every year. He experienced directly the seismic shift in agriculture. Reflecting upon it, he concludes, ‘I think that no other generation will ever see as many changes in farming as my generation has lived through.’
Agriculture dominates Northern Ireland. Farms have been passed down through generations and land is integral to Irish identity. When farming was extensive, it was good for curlews and lots of other wildlife. When it changed from manual to mechanised, organic to chemical, hay to silage, it spelled disaster. Ground-nesting birds such as the corncrake and curlew were eradicated in large areas. Farming machinery destroys eggs and chicks indiscriminately. Faced with danger, curlew chicks will sink down into the grass and freeze, where they are killed instantly by the rotating blades. Nests full of eggs are flattened. Those birds that do manage to survive the machines will often fall prey to foxes and crows, two species that do well in intensive farmland.
The border county of Tyrone was once a curlew stronghold. Like County Antrim, this too was a land of rugged bogs and farms, but it underwent a dramatic transformation in the 1980s. Many of the peat bogs were stripped for turf and the floodplains of rivers such as the Blackwater were drained. The River Blackwater itself was dredged, deepened and widened, removing valuable wetland habitat for all kinds of wildlife. Some of the more marginal farmland was abandoned. Because curlews were once so numerous there, the RSPB set up a curlew recovery project, but sometime in the early 2000s they disappeared from the landscape and the project was abandoned. It took less than a generation to see curlews eradicated from a large area where they used to be common. Snipe, lapwing and redshank have all but gone, too. It was a stark example of how quickly birds can vanish. Now the only places that are safe for waders are where agriculture remains extensive or protected as nature reserves, such as cold, wet, upland Glenwherry and the islands in the middle of Lough Erne, County Fermanagh. The rest of Northern Ireland is now curlew-free. But even Glenwherry, which largely escaped the intensification of the lowlands, is under threat.
Neal and I sit in the car for a while in a layby to let the worst of a squall pass. Through the misting windows he points out the patchwork appearance of the view in front of us. Sections of bog are being turned into bright green rye grass fields or planted with conifers, both activities encouraged by subsidies. ‘We need to help farmers to keep some areas rough and unimproved for the curlews,’ he says. Keeping forestry at bay on land that is deemed unproductive in terms of farming is a big challenge. The Northern Ireland government has a target to increase tree cover by 50 per cent by 2056. Curlews, like many other ground-nesting birds, avoid nesting within 500 metres of the edge of forest, nervous of predators like foxes, badgers and crows. Far more land is therefore taken out of nesting habitat than just the area that is planted. Wind and solar farm applications are now commonplace in marginal land, bringing their own dangers for flying birds and disturbance on the ground. Glenwherry is currently considering proposals for a 250-acre solar farm, and wind farms can be seen all around the area. Slowly the upland bog is being transformed into a tamed, multi-use landscape. Somehow, in all of this complexity of human needs and endeavour, curlews must try to survive in their dwindling niche.
As the sleet tests the mettle of my new waterproof jacket, Neal and I wander along a puddle-strewn track between fields in the active Trial Management Project area, hoping to see a pair of curlews that had been spotted nearby. They have not long arrived back for the breeding season and their behaviour suggests they are staking out their territory and strengthening their pair bond, prior to laying eggs. Kerry Darbishire describes early-arriving curlews in her poem, ‘Messengers of Spring’:
In pairs they returned
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