Curlew cam returns

Interested viewers can see the live action through the Curlew Country YouTube channel and catch the latest pictures.

For the second year Curlew Cam is being sponsored by the Curlew Recovery Partnership and Secure Web Services, long-time supporters of the initiative, are providing broadband services with Carnyx Wild providing technical support.

Curlew Country is based in the Shropshire Hills and Welsh Marches and has been working to reverse the decline of the local populations since 2015.

Amanda Perkins, lead for Curlew Country, said: "This is a pioneering project and this is an opportunity for people to see how these birds manage in the wild to hatch their eggs and bring up the chicks.

"The parents take it in turns to incubate the eggs.

"This pair being watched on camera have a nest in the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and have four eggs which are expected to hatch about June 14 or June 15."

After monitoring wild Curlew nests in 2015 and 2016, with no surviving chicks, members moved to take action in an effort to stop the birds disappearing from the area completely.

Members work closely with farmers, land managers and local communities to raise awareness of the plight of the birds and to take steps to improve their chances of success in the future.

In addition, they also work with policy makers to try and ensure that there are steps taken to reward those farmers that support breeding Curlew on their land.

While waiting for steps to be taken to improve their future they have been using a process called ‘head-starting’ to boost the population.

This means that eggs are taken from wild nests under licence, to be incubated and reared artificially until the fledglings can fly and be released back into the wild.

Over the past four years more than 90 young curlew have been released and we are now well into the 2022 head-starting journey.

Curlew Cam was the first ever "live-streamed" camera of a curlew nest in the UK, and aired in 2017.

Curlew Country aim to bring wonderful view of the secretive birds and their behaviour.

In 2020 and 2021 many people tuned in and found the intimate camera view to be comforting in a world otherwise thrown into turmoil by the global pandemic.

This season the team hope that the live stream can get more people interested in the birds and for more information people can log onto the curlewcountry.org website address.