Hugh’s views – for the love of birds
Back in November last year it was with some sadness but no great surprise I read that the slender billed curlew had been declared extinct. The first bird from the Europe/West Asia/North Africa region to be declared thus since the last pair of Great Auks, a large flightless seabird, were killed in Iceland in 1844. The slender billed curlew nested in central Siberia and wintered on the North Moroccan coast where the last individual was recorded in 1995. Reasons for the decline of this species, only identified as a separate species in 1817 are generally given as loss of breeding habitat to agriculture and relentless shooting of birds around their wintering grounds. As recently as 1993 the total population was estimated at no more than one thousand individuals.
However, in May 1998 a group of birders at Druridge Pools, near Hauxley, spotted an unusual curlew with a number of more common Eurasian Curlews. The bird was videoed, photographed, sketched and widely discussed over the next four days while it remained at Druridge Pools and was announced to be a slender billed curlew.
The evidence was presented to and accepted by the British Birds Rarities Committee. The British Ornithologists Union Records Committee followed suit and the Druridge Bay bird became the first slender billed curlew to be recorded in Britain. Quite a coup for this region.
Then in October 2004 another bird showing similar characteristics was discovered at RSPB Minsmere. This time DNA was collected, analysed and the bird was eventually declared to be a first year Eurasian Curlew. This discovery threw doubt on the identification of the Druridge Pools bird so it was decided to re-examine the evidence which previously had been accepted. After years of re-examination including comparison with museum skins, the last having been collected in 1983, it was finally decided in 2013 to remove the slender billed curlew from the British List although the decision was by no means unanimous.
However, the loss of the slender billed curlew, described by conservationists as ‘fundamentally devastating’ has now focussed attention on several other threatened shore birds such as turnstone (pictured) and dunlin and even the Eurasian curlew all of which can be found wintering on the shore and in coastal fields around Amble. Up to eighty curlews can sometimes be seen wintering in the fields adjoining the Links Road but for how much longer?
Hugh Tindle
