Keep an eye and an ear out for this large wading bird – the call of the Curlew is one of the most evocative sounds to hear in the harbour. A long “curlee curlee”, which is described in Norman MacCaig’s poem, Curlew:

Music as desolate, as beautiful
As your loved places,
Mountainy marshes and glistening mudflats
By the stealthy sea.

The scientific name, Numenius arquata, translates ‘new moon’ and ‘archer’s bow’ – both of which describe the long bill – the thin shaving of light of the new moon and the curve of the bow. The bill is some 15 cm long, three times the length of its head, so allowing the bird to probe deep into the mudflats at low tide.

Stanpit is blessed to have Curlew for most the year but numbers build up in the Autumn and Winter months, with birds coming down from the uplands, where they breed, to our estuaries. 

Neil Jones