When M’s life is threatened, James Bond takes her to his ancestral home in the wilds of Scotland. Nestled between mountain slopes, Skyfall is a desolate yet evocative landscape of wet moorland, a safe refuge to make a last stand. A native of the same moors, the Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata), is also making a last stand – globally considered Near Threatened, the species’ UK population suffered a 62% decline between 1970 and 2012, with some of the highest declines recorded from the Scottish moors.
The plight of the Eurasian Curlew exemplifies that of almost all curlew species. Of the eight species in the world, five are considered globally at risk of extinction according to the IUCN Red List, with two of them quite possibly already extinct (Eskimo Curlew N. borealis, and Slender-billed Curlew N. tenuirostris). To mark this sombre situation, April 21 is designated as World Curlew Day. It is a grassroots initiative, supported by many conservation organisations, to raise awareness of the plight of curlews and to promote actions to support them.
Within the Americas, the four regularly occurring species of curlew are all considered of conservation concern. Eskimo Curlew is listed as Endangered in both Canada and the United States, while the US Shorebird Conservation Plan considers the Bristle-thighed Curlew to be of “Greatest Concern”, and Whimbrel (N. phaeopus) and Long-billed Curlew (N. americanus) as “High Concern”.
Left: Long-billed Curlew. Photo: Stark. Right: Whimbrel at Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: Shiloh Schulte.
Perhaps now the numerically rarest curlew, the Bristle-thighed Curlew, considered Near Threatened at the global level, is one of the most unusual shorebirds in the world. Breeding in western Alaska and wintering on atolls and small islands in Oceania, it is the only migratory shorebird that winters exclusively on oceanic islands. The 10,000 or so remaining birds are threatened by loss and degradation of habitat on the wintering grounds, and potentially from the impacts of introduced predators.
In addition to its unusual distribution, Bristle-thighed Curlew is the only shorebird known to become flightless during moult, and to use tools when foraging – “slamming” food items (including rats) again flat rocks to dismember them. One of the species’ main breeding areas, the Yukon Delta, is a WHSRN site of Hemispheric Importance. To date no WHSRN sites have been designated on the wintering grounds in the Pacific, though several qualify in terms of the number of birds they support. Designating sites could help safeguard key habitat for the species.
The wild moors of Skyfall are not the only link between James Bond and curlews. The last confirmed record of Eskimo Curlew, a bird shot in Barbados on 4 September 1963, was prepared as a specimen by the real James Bond, an ornithologist and curator of birds at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia (where the specimen remains). In a 10 May 1965 newspaper article (in The Spokesman-Review), Bond was cited as saying “One hundred years from now this may be the last known specimen of the Eskimo curlew”. Unfortunately Bond’s words may have come true much sooner than he anticipated. Diamonds may be forever, but the same cannot be said of curlews.
Cover Photo: Flying Whimbrels. Photo: Alan Kneidel.
