CURLEW CONCERN

Ian Coghill’s article Will the curlew cease to call? [March issue] must be supported by country folk. All waders and large ground-nesting birds will disappear in the next few years. The decline of these birds coincided with the protection of birds of prey in the 1980s; we are overrun with buzzards and kites here in Mid Wales. Kites are being artificially fed at feeding stations, causing a big explosion in their population.

In 2007, there were three pairs of nesting curlew in our little valley. They all had successful hatching in hay meadows that the farm had identified before mowing and planned to leave unmown around the nests. However, they hatched before harvest and the buzzards were witnessed taking all the young. That was the last curlew seen in our valley; lapwing vanished years before.

The RSPB’S £3.3m spent at Lake Vyrnwy may as well have been used to light a fire.

Three years ago I went to Hay Festival to listen to Mary Colwell, author of Curlew Moon. She couldn’t understand why curlew and lapwing didn’t breed in nature reserves. I would like to have tried to throw some light on the reason but in the following discussion I didn’t get a chance. Nature reserves are also full of foxes, badgers, buzzards, kites, ravens, carrion crows, magpies and stoats.

Michael Floyd

Radnorshire

Having just read Ian Coghill’s article on the curlew – and, over the years, following the disasters wrought by the RSPB – I have penned the following: The Curlew’s haunting mournful cry

Abounds where keepers thrive But hand the land to RSPB

And few remain alive.

The same is known for

mountain hares

Which crowd the hills with grouse

But cancel keepers from the Hill And all that’s left… a mouse?

For knowledge deep of Nature’s way

Is what the keepers bring

They guard and tend throughout the day

But the predator is king.

Lines composed in a tractor by a saddened countryman.

Colin Seaford, by email