27th April – Guillemots
There are many evocative sounds in the Highlands such as the roaring of red deer stags in the Autumn. Seabird colonies of auks such as guillemots in the middle of the breeding season may be raucous as their calls echo round the sea cliffs but it is still very impressive. In the last two weeks greylag and pink footed geese have been heading north to their wintering grounds in Iceland and beyond. Their calls seem to epitomise the colder wildness where they will breed but despite the loud calls in flight they can sometimes be difficult to actually see. Of all the evocative sounds perhaps none is more so than the bird displaying in the glens, straths and moorland of the Highlands at present, namely the curlew.
The call notes have been described as “an eerie lamenting cry” and have given rise to a great deal of superstition. The mournful notes led many to say it signified death but others were far more stimulated in a much more positive way. Norman MacCaig who stayed in Lochinver wrote a poem in March 1987 entitled “Curlew” that contains the lines “trailing bubbles of music/over the squelchy hillside/Music as desolate, as beautiful/as your loved places./ Mountain marshes and glistening mud-flats/by the stealthy sea”. The very wide range of local, Scots and Gaelic names is typical of many others birds that were shot for the pot. The plumage of the adult curlew is darker in summer than in winter hence the Scottish proverb ” Be she white or be she black/The curlew has ten pence on her back”. Curlews were much prized in the old court banquets and it was not many years ago that they could still be shot. It seems to have been an acquired taste especially after it had been feeding in the winter in the mud of the firths and the foreshore.
Curlews have an unusual breeding cycle and as they nest on the ground they suffer from predation by a wide range of predators such as fox, mink and crows. The male makes several scrapes and it is the female who decides which one will be actually used and then she alone lines it. The nest is mainly in the open on a mound or tussock but sometimes protected by vegetation. Both parents will incubate the eggs but this falls mainly to the female. Once the chicks have hatched and are active the female leaves with only the males tending them before they fly to the coast.
The curlews calling in the Highlands are birds that will have come back from their wintering grounds in southern Britain or Ireland. The males move into the territories first and wait for the females to arrive. Curlews have had to adapt to changing land use and it is now difficult to imagine it was not too long ago that they were confined to upland areas whereas now they breed down to sea level. Overgrazing and over burning may have forced it to breed at lower altitudes but in recent years such areas have not been ideal. Changes in the times that grasslands are cut has adversely affected curlews that are now classed as on the “amber” list. This means it is of “medium conservation concern” as opposed to the “red” list which means of “High conservation concern”.
The call notes have been described as “an eerie lamenting cry” and have given rise to a great deal of superstition. The mournful notes led many to say it signified death but others were far more stimulated in a much more positive way. Norman MacCaig who stayed in Lochinver wrote a poem in March 1987 entitled “Curlew” that contains the lines “trailing bubbles of music/over the squelchy hillside/Music as desolate, as beautiful/as your loved places./ Mountain marshes and glistening mud-flats/by the stealthy sea”. The very wide range of local, Scots and Gaelic names is typical of many others birds that were shot for the pot. The plumage of the adult curlew is darker in summer than in winter hence the Scottish proverb ” Be she white or be she black/The curlew has ten pence on her back”. Curlews were much prized in the old court banquets and it was not many years ago that they could still be shot. It seems to have been an acquired taste especially after it had been feeding in the winter in the mud of the firths and the foreshore.
Curlews have an unusual breeding cycle and as they nest on the ground they suffer from predation by a wide range of predators such as fox, mink and crows. The male makes several scrapes and it is the female who decides which one will be actually used and then she alone lines it. The nest is mainly in the open on a mound or tussock but sometimes protected by vegetation. Both parents will incubate the eggs but this falls mainly to the female. Once the chicks have hatched and are active the female leaves with only the males tending them before they fly to the coast.
The curlews calling in the Highlands are birds that will have come back from their wintering grounds in southern Britain or Ireland. The males move into the territories first and wait for the females to arrive. Curlews have had to adapt to changing land use and it is now difficult to imagine it was not too long ago that they were confined to upland areas whereas now they breed down to sea level. Overgrazing and over burning may have forced it to breed at lower altitudes but in recent years such areas have not been ideal. Changes in the times that grasslands are cut has adversely affected curlews that are now classed as on the “amber” list. This means it is of “medium conservation concern” as opposed to the “red” list which means of “High conservation concern”.
