By Louise CullenBBC News NI
21 May 2018
The curlew has inspired poets
with its low, bubbling and rising call.
It is sometimes confused with the
much bolder gull and whimbrel, but is a much more elusive bird than those
brazen show-offs.
That can make monitoring their
numbers, which are known to be in decline, that much more difficult.
"Curlew are really
struggling within Ireland at present, and their populations have declined by
over 89%," said Amy Burns, a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
(RSPB) warden in County Fermanagh.
"It's one of these birds of
the farmland, and of the wider countryside and it's very enigmatic.
"It's got
this lovely, haunting, bubbling call which a lot of Irish poets
and writers have written about, so it would just be a real shame to see them go
from our countryside."
There are two sites in Northern
Ireland where the RSPB keeps the bird under observation during its short Spring
breeding season.
One is in County Fermanagh, the
other is in County Antrim.
"Fermanagh's quite
important, so we hold about 60 pairs of curlew and that's about 10% of the
all-Ireland population," said Amy.
"At Glenwherry up in Antrim,
they have about 47 or 48 pairs of curlew.
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