“The tide rises, the tide falls, / The twilight darkens, the curlew calls”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is a poet whose stellar reputation of the late 19th and early 20th Century is rather in eclipse, to say the least. No doubt his star will…
Category: birds
“When I landed in the republic of conscience / it was so noiseless when the engines stopped./ I could hear a curlew high above the runway.”
From the Republic of Conscience was written by Seamus Heaney in 1985 at the request of Mary Lawlor, then head of Amnesty International in Ireland. While I find it perhaps…
“Curlew Call”, Peter Bagshaw
The call of the curlew is its best known feature – indeed, the potential disappearance of this sound from the soundscape of the countryside is one of the most potent…
“Curlews Lift”, Ted Hughes
Curlews Lift Out of the maternal watery blue lines Stripped of all but their cry Some twists of near-edible sinew They slough off The robes of bilberry blue The cloud-stained…
“Curlew Moon”, Mary Colwell
In 2016, Mary Colwell walked from Sligo to The Wash, a 500 mile epic to find out why curlews have declined so precipitously. She has written a book, Curlew Moon,…
A short film about Curlews: “Keeper of the Call”
World Curlew Day is next Sunday, April 21st. The decline of the curlew, whose call truly merits that overused word “iconic”, is one of the most shocking natural history stories…
Glass Paintings of a robin and of badgers from Black Hen Designs
A couple of charming glass paintings from Roscommon’s Black Hen Designs: Closer detail:
Sparrowhawk
On St Stephen’s Day, I awoke to see a sparrowhawk perched regally, and not at all discreetly, on the roof of one of our bird tables. It stood, as if…
Séamus Sweeney 