Scotland must not lose spiritual bird seen as saints' saviours – and hell-hounds
The heart-and-soul bird belongs to Scotland. As its voice ripples through the hard-working fields, heather moors and the wild, wet, open spaces, our horizons lift; landscapes become more than earthly elements, they gain a dimension.
Few can hear the bubbling call of the curlew in spring and not stop, transfixed. Ted Hughes heard a "heart-sob", for Edinburgh poet Norman MacCaig the curlew sang music "as desolate, as beautiful as your loved places, mountainy marshes and glistening mudflats by the stealthy sea". Galloway farmer and author Patrick Laurie described it as "a belly-roll of longing". It is all those yearnings for me, too, but there is an added dualism at the heart of the curlew’s call, one that is both ancestral and modern, an echo from the past as well as a portent for the future.
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Hide AdCurlews have always been messengers. We have looked to them for warnings of storms rolling in from the sea, their cries carried on gales to tell fishermen to turn for home. When travelling, Celtic saints lost in mist and fog out at sea thought the call of the curlew would guide their small boats to the safety of the shore. The curlew became integral to our salvation.
They were spiritual beings, but these dualistic birds were also once synonymous with negative notions and were something to be feared.


Bitter-sweet associations
The Scottish name for curlews, ‘whaup’, is an onomatopoeic reflection of the barking call the adults make to warn their chicks of danger. When heard at night, people imagined them to be the hounds of hell racing across the sky, and feared a death in the family was imminent. The piercing and pure ‘curleee’ calls were thought to be the voices of restless souls searching the world for peace.
The real birds, however, hold our contradictions with an easy grace. I find Europe’s largest wader beautiful to behold with its long, arcuate bill, ballet dancer legs and elegant, slender neck.
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Hide AdBut even in their physical form, they held bitter-sweet associations. Scottish folklore tells us they evoked memories of half-human, malevolent, long-nosed, thin-necked goblins, also called whaups, that ran around the roofs of houses at night. "A whaup in the nest" refers to some brewing nastiness, or the hatching of evil plans, and a Scottish Highlander’s prayer asks to be protected from "witches, warlocks and lang-nebbed things".


A once common bird
Yet, today, they have transformed to be the focus of art, poetry and literature. Musicians of all genres are moved to compose pieces inspired by their calls, as do artists, poets and writers who see a wild creature calling through wild places as a symbol of yearning, or ‘cianalas’ in Scottish Gaelic.
Is there another bird that holds so many of our fears and hopes as the curlew?
We build our tales around the everyday, and these folk memories attest to how common the curlew once was across Scotland. They still nest in lowland fields, rough pasture and heather moorland, their bills still probe the mud and their feet stride through cold water, but in far fewer numbers. There are now an estimated 28,000 curlew in Scotland.
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Hide AdCome the colder months our own native birds are joined along coasts and estuaries by thousands of Northern European curlews, swelling their population to 150,000 and giving the impression all is well, but numbers alone can be deceptive.
Dramatic population decline
It is shocking that in the first quarter of this century, the breeding population of curlews has halved in England and Scotland and declined by more than 80 per cent in Wales and 90 per cent in all-Ireland. The winter situation is also serious, with the population falling by more than 30 per cent in 30 years. This rapid thinning out is so worrying that, in 2015, a paper in the Journal British Birds considered it the most pressing conservation priority for birds in the UK.
Research has shown that the problem lies in their inability to fledge enough chicks to replace themselves. Adult survival is good, once curlews reach two years old, they have a reasonable chance of living to 30 years or more.
The issues lie with the survival of eggs and chicks. Curlews, like other wading birds, nest on the ground, and the ground is where we do most of our activities. We drain it, plant it with crops, harrow, roll and mow it, build over it, develop it, cover it in plantations, graze it excessively, take our leisure and play sport on it, allow our dogs to race over it, and we manicure it for our aesthetic needs.
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Hide AdNo places for chicks to fledge
The modern, intensively farmed and urbanised world has also created the ideal conditions for a myriad of generalist predators to thrive, such as foxes and crows. These adaptive creatures eat human-generated food, carrion, the spoils of agriculture, as well as wader chicks, and they can exploit better than most the uniform landscapes we have created in order to breed and provide for their young.
Specialist wildlife that requires a nuanced land full of diversity, abundant insects, freedom from high levels of predation and very little disturbance simply cannot find enough habitat to breed successfully. In some places no chicks fledge at all, in others only half the number of chicks survive that are required for a sustainable population. Bit by bit we have transformed their world into ours.
And so, I return to the start of this article, the curlew as a bearer of tidings for the future. Unless we find ways to fold them into our activities, we will lose this much-loved songster. Wildlife that has no economic value has no voice in our money-driven world, it relies on us. The question is, do we care enough to speak out and to act? If we don’t, they will be gone in a very short time.
Mary Colwell is the director of Curlew Action, a writer, TV and radio producer, and a conservationist
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