253 : Northern Curlew

Northern Curlew - numenius arquata

Superb latin name for a start - sounds like a centurian from the Eagle of the Ninth. ''Numenius the druids are at the gate - form testudiae !!". We've set off in the wrong direction there this morning. Try another picture.

This birds needs mud to probe in with that long bill to find prey items to refuel. The Pivot fields were looking a bit baked at the weekend - there was little standing water about. This is common wader across the Western Paleartic. Overwintering down in the Gulf and Africa or being seen on passage on the way through. This is the most widespread of the 8 global curlew species - spending its Summers right across temperate Europe and Asia and then heading South right across Europe, Asia and Africa in the Winter months. So a Northern Hemisphere bird and an Old World one.

These are easy to dismiss because they are easy to see in most places but here in Dubai this is probably only the second or third curlew I have seen over a few years. They remind of the cold, muddy estuaries of East Anglia - you can hear the trilling song through the close fog when you are tramping out across places like Mersea Island or Walton-on-the-Naze. The other long contact call is onamatapeic "Currr-looo". Those kind of places somehow represent proper birding in comparison to the radio accompanied, car bound, 5 * Dubai birding that rarely sees me walk more than 100 yards. I am going to have to start working harder for my birds at some point ! This was shot out of the car window.

I remember going to help a family friend canvas for the elections in the UK and finding myself staying near Darlington on the North Yorkshire Moors. We always associate Curlews with the coast. It was June and the fields and meadows about the places were dripping with Curlews and their calls - all up on the high wet peaty ground with a plentful supply of earthworms and stone walls to fire off display songs from. Anthony lost the election to Alan Milton (we were "blue" and in the North) but I got to stay on an amazing piece of moorland with cuckoos and meadow pippets, snipe and other calls all around me in the morning and evenings. Snipe drumming for example - diving for the ground and letting a set of feathers near the base of the legs "hum" - almost like the siren on a Stuka. The Yorkshire Moors in Summer. I had a birdsong tableau by Geoff Sounds (still have if I look for it) taped up on the Moors - awesome. Radio 4 sonic birding.

At night if you find a quiet spot and listen all over the Northern Hemisphere you can on clear nights make out the sounds of the vast flocks of birds passing overhead - it goes on a lot at night - the stars are their guide and the lower temperatures mean that their tiny bodies, undergoing a huge work out, do not overheat as they burn out several hundred kilometres through the dark. Amazing journeys. We see them refueling. There was a little "fall" of Little Ringed Plover at the pivots - a packets of 5 or 6 birds huddled down in the grass with one or two feeding on a pool. It was February of last year when I saw the last birds moving through. This years group were resting up for the next leg of the mission.



For a moment I thought I had not posted for Little Ringed.  I've muddled my Kentish with my Little-Ringed.

The Curlew bird will be heading up to the Taiga and fields of Central/Northern Asia. These journeys are all in play at the moment - billions of birds of the move.

Northern Curlew, numenius arquata

Dubai, Pivot Fields

16 March 2013