“a curlew cried and in the luminous wind/ A curlew answered” – “Paudeen”, WB Yeats
World Curlew Day has been and gone, but the literature of curlews seems endless. I am reading “Curlew Moon” by Mary Colwell which has been an engrossing read so far…
Tag: curlew
Curlews in The Thirty-Nine Steps
John Buchan’s thrillers are not exactly politically correct by today’s standards, but contain many gems of prose – especially on the natural world and on the cares of power. There is…
Henry Williamson on Curlews: From “Tarka the Otter”
From Tarka the Otter Within the moor is the Forest, a region high and treeless, where sedge grasses grow on the slopes to the sky. In early summer the wild…
“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…
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…
Séamus Sweeney 