GWCT News Blog

The GWCT carries out research on a number of shorebirds and waders. From studies of the migration routes of snipe, lapwing and curlew, to the monitoring of nesting habits of lapwing in wet meadows and arable fields, to developing new techniques to protect them from predators.

What does it take to bring back a bird on the edge of extinction? For curlew, one of the UK’s most threatened breeding birds, the answer is anything but simple. Their story captures the tangled challenges of modern conservation, balancing farming, land use and our own connection to nature.

The great snipe is a bird steeped in both history and mystery, captivating hunters and ornithologists alike for centuries.

Conservation conflict between marsh harriers and waders may be minimal, but the fact that waders and their chicks are a minor part of the harriers’ diet is not evidence of this, and the RSPB should know better than to suggest it.

The Curlew Connections Wales project is yet another example of how working collaboratively with farmers and providing support is proving to be beneficial for breeding curlew.

The latest survey of the UK’s resident Woodcock population has shown that in the past ten years the Scottish population has dropped from around 30,000 birds in 2013, to just over 20,000 in 2023.

To mark World Curlew Day we'd like to share ‘Call of the Moors', a poem written by Nigel Algar Orde-Powlett, later 6th Baron Bolton, when he was a teenager. It was published in 1918 and he wrote it after his older brother 2nd Lieutenant William Percy Orde-Powlett was killed in action during World War One

As part of his final studies at The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Nico Venables has built a marionette puppet of a Curlew which he believes is the first of this puppetry style.

There are few more iconic sights than a curlew in flight, but without intervention it could be something future generations will never get to enjoy. The curlew with its distinctive haunting call, is now one of our most rapidly declining breeding bird species in the UK...

As I write this the first curlew are returning to their breeding grounds in the UK. We welcome around 25% of the world’s breeding population each spring but without urgent intervention, this beautiful bird may soon become nothing more than a memory.