Good year for Stone curlews in Wessex
06/11/2007 00:00:00
Stone curlew facts.
- The stone-curlew is about the length of a wood pigeon but slimmer, more elegant and with much longer wings. Its most striking characteristics are its long yellow legs and large yellow eyes, the power of which enables it to feed on insects at night.
- Stone-curlews arrive at English breeding grounds in late March or April and stay until October. They lay two eggs in a shallow scrape or hollow on the ground and can have one or two broods. Young do not fly until they are between 36 and 42 days old.
- Most European populations of stone-curlew are falling because more farmland is becoming intensively managed. In England, stone-curlew projects have bucked the trend.
- The stone-curlew is not related to the Eurasian curlew – a familiar bird of the moors and hills of northern Britain - but is so named because it has a similar, wailing call. It is particularly vocal at dusk. It is a migratory bird spending winters in southern Spain, south-west France, Algeria, Morocco and West Africa.
- Seventy-eight of the 116 Wessex pairs bred in Wiltshire (68 in 2005) – beating the target of 66 pairs in Wiltshire by 2007. In 2005, the 103 breeding pairs in Wessex were a major contribution to meeting the government’s UK Biodiversity Action Plan target for this species - 300 pairs nationally, five years ahead of time.
Normanton Down
- Druids start their solstice celebrations at the RSPB’s Normanton Down reserve, which boasts Britain’s most important Bronze Age barrow cemetery (Normanton Barrows). Artefacts of national importance have been found on the site and are now housed in the Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes. Recovered objects made of gold are kept in a bank vault because of their value.
- The Stonehenge World Heritage Site covers 2,665 hectares (26.6 square km, 6,500 acres) around the stone circle. Ownership is shared between English Heritage, the National Trust, the Ministry of Defence, farmers and householders.
Records have been broken for the 2nd successive year by the most secretive bird in Thomas Hardy’s Wessex.
Good weather and the help of more than 150 landowners meant 116 pairs of stone-curlew bred successfully in the region compared to 103 pairs in 2005. More than 100 chicks were ringed for the first time. In 2005, the number of breeding pairs hit the government’s 2010 target five years early.
The success of stone-curlews has been hailed by the RSPB after the species suffered the most spectacular decline of any UK breeding bird since the Second World War.
But the Society fears that the continued threat of an over ground road being built around Stonehenge, to ease A303 congestion, is putting this success story at risk.
Nick Adams, Wessex stone-curlew project officer said: ‘It has been a fantastic year for these birds and is the first time we’ve ringed more than 100 chicks in a season which is quite a milestone.
‘But an over-ground road now would do serious damage to habitat creation schemes that the government has paid for. Losing even one stone-curlew nest site is significant because there are still so few of them. The species’ survival remains incredibly fragile and our celebrations for the birds’ success are being overshadowed by the set back the over ground road could cause.’ The Government said in January that a 2.1km tunnel near the World Heritage Site, agreed after a 2004 public inquiry, was likely to be too expensive and instead proposed several other options including over ground roads north and south of the famous stones.
The southern route would destroy much of the RSPB’s Normanton Down reserve, which this year hosted a pair of Stone curlews which raised two chicks, as well as more than 20 roosting birds before they left on migration. The northern option would run close to the Salisbury Plain Special Protection Area putting stone-curlew nesting and roosting sites at risk.
The government has spent £1.9 million on funding improvements to land around Stonehenge and helping stone-curlew in the region. Of that, £90,000 has been spent at Normanton Down alone. An additional £500,000 has been spent on stone-curlew recovery schemes.
The birds’ success this year is because the weather was dry for nesting and wet when chicks hatched, increasing the amount of insect food. It is also because of the substantial help of landowners and farmers.
Nick Adams said: ‘Farmers and landowners have been brilliant at responding quickly to the need for things like cutting back vegetation to remove cover for predators. Their involvement has been crucial and without their enthusiasm for the recovery projects the decline of stone-curlew would probably have continued.’
Read the comments about this article and leave your own comment