Curlew Moon. Mary Colwell
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Place names can tell us much about the past character and wildlife of an area. In England, former animal denizens are recorded as Buckfast and Wolford, for example. Others are more obscure, such as Birkenhead, meaning the headland where birch trees grow. In Northern Ireland, Doire, or Derry, means oak grove, and Cúil Raithin, the town of Coleraine, is a place of many ferns. Laios na n Gealbhán, or Lisnaglevin, means ‘fort of the sparrows’. Cranfield, in County Antrim, is the anglicised version of Creamhchoill, or wild-garlic wood. All of life, whether sought after for food or fuel, grand or humble, is to be found in place names. In County Tyrone the townland of Pollnameeltogue means ‘hollow of the midges’, and Knockiniller is the ‘hill of the eagle’. A journey through the towns of Ireland is a glimpse into an abundant past natural history, where people named their homes in terms of the life around them.
Glenwherry has the quaintly named Whappstown Road. Whapp or whaup is an onomatopoeic Celtic name, reproducing the sound of one of the curlew’s barking calls. It also gives its name to Whaup Hill in County Antrim and Whaup Island in County Down. When an old musician from the Sperrin Mountains was asked to sing a song, he said, ‘I whaups a bit on the flute as well, ye know,’ and ‘What’s thou waap-whaupin aboot?’ was a rebuke to a crying child in the northeast of England.
Whappstown Road is a hint that curlews were once common here in Antrim. Maybe their calls over the hills as they returned to breed in early spring lifted the hearts of those past generations of tough farmers. Neal Warnock, the RSPB Conservation Advisor for Glenwherry, told me how much he looked forward to their arrival in March. ‘For me, being up in the hills all year round, there’s quite a few months when you’re faced with silence, and the more I work up here the more the anticipation grows of hearing the first curlew of the spring return. It’s fantastic to hear them call across the valley and the farmers look forward to them coming back, too. They hold an important place in the hearts and minds of the people that live in this area.’
It seems they always have. In the late nineteenth century, James McKowen, a worker in a bleach factory near Belfast, led a double life as a poet and songwriter. He used the pen name ‘Curlew’, or sometimes ‘Kitty Connor’, and wrote lyrics for ballads. Though his hands helped turn the wheels of industry, his heart was alone on the bogs with curlews in spring. His collection of poems appeared in The Harp of Erin, in 1869, and his song ‘The Curlew’ relives his boyhood joy of wandering through the glens of Antrim, listening to that soulful cry of the wilderness, alongside those of the golden eagle and the turtle dove.
The Curlew
By the marge of the sea has thy foot ever strayed,
When eve shed its deep mellow tinge?
Hast thou lingered to hear the sweet music that’s made
By the ocean-waves’ whispering fringe?
Tis then you may hear the wild barnacle’s call
The scream of the sea-coving mew,
And that deep thrilling note that is wilder than all
The voice of the wailing curlew.
The song of the linnet is sweet from the spray
The blackbird’s comes rich from the thorn;
And clear is the lark’s when he’s soaring away
To herald the birth of the morn.
The note of the eagle is piercing and loud,
The turtle’s, as soft as it’s true;
But give me, oh! give me, that song from the cloud
The voice of the wailing curlew.
Sky minstrel! How often I’ve paused as a child,
As I’ve roamed in my own native vale,
To listen thy music so fitful and wild,
Born far on the wings of a gale.
And still, as I rest by the door of my cot,
Thy voice can youth’s feelings renew;
And strangely I’m tempted to envy thy lot,
Thou wild-noted, wailing curlew.4
Glenwherry is an anglicised version of the original Irish name Gleannfaire, translated as ‘valley of the watching’. The original reason for this name is lost in time, but it is apt once again thanks to the RSPB project based here to closely observe the area’s breeding curlews as part of its Curlew Recovery Programme, led by Sarah Sanders. They recorded forty-four pairs in 2016, and by today’s standards that makes Glenwherry a hotspot for curlews in Northern Ireland.
A key part of the Curlew Recovery Programme is the snappily named Trial Management Project (TMP). Despite the corporate terminology, the TMP is a practical, five-year project concentrating on six upland areas (of which Glenwherry is one) spread throughout northern England, Scotland, North Wales and Northern Ireland. Each site consists of two roughly 10 square-kilometre plots situated close to each other. One plot will see all the action – habitat management, predator control, special grazing regimes and so on – whereas on the other site it will be business as usual with no special measures. In the active site, in Glenwherry, the RSPB is working with farmers to thin out rushes and create better feeding and nesting areas by targeted grazing of cattle. Some shrubs and trees are also being removed so that predators such as hooded crows can’t use them as lookout posts to spot eggs and chicks. Foxes and crows will also be controlled in the active plot, but not in the control site. At the end of the five-year period, hopefully, a clearer idea will have emerged about what kind of management is needed to stabilise or even reverse the decline of upland curlews.
When I visited Glenwherry in April 2016 it was only year two of the TMP, so too early for any results, but the project hasn’t come a day too soon. The last thirty years have been catastrophic for Northern Irish curlews, and many other farmland birds. Back in 1986 a survey found 5,000 pairs of breeding curlews throughout the province. By 2015 their numbers had crashed to fewer than 500 pairs, and probably closer to 250. That is a decline of over 90 per cent. The cause? Changes in farming. Agriculture dominates Northern Ireland, three-quarters of the land is farmed. It is the country of toil and soil. Prior to the 1970s, small mixed farms, with both arable farming and livestock, were widespread. They were family-run affairs that were, to use the jargon, ‘extensive’ in character. Extensive (as opposed to ‘intensive’) means low chemical input in terms of fertiliser and pesticides, low stocking density and lower yield per acre. A seven-year rotation system was used for crops such as oats, potatoes, and pasture for hay. Over the decades that followed, these smaller farms have been amalgamated into larger, specialised, intensive businesses, centred mainly on livestock. There are now 1.7 million cows in Northern Ireland providing both milk and meat, compared to a million in 1965, and over the same time frame land given over to crops declined by two-thirds. Fields that once grew food for people are now laid to grass for livestock.
In 1965 cows were fed through the winter months on hay, 90 per cent of which was cut in August. By 1995 hay was replaced by silage – a method of growing food for cows by frequently cutting grass and storing it anaerobically under large sheets of black plastic. If they can produce enough grass, farmers can now feed cows throughout the year. Soil is ‘enhanced’ by the addition of fertiliser and the grass is sprayed with pesticides. By using super-productive varieties such as rye grass, larger quantities can be grown and then cut as often as every three weeks from April onwards and stored in silos. The dairy sector is particualry important. In 1965 there were 196,000 dairy cows in Northern Ireland; today, 312,000 cows produce milk and cheese, two-thirds of which is exported. The dairy industry is vital to the economy of Northern Ireland – and it depends on silage.
Patrick G. McBride was a farmer in the Glens of Antrim for much of the twentieth century. His memoir, Where the Curlew Flies, describes the old ways of doing things. He celebrates the daily joys of working on the land, as well as being realistic about the hard labour of farming with hand tools and horses. Hay was made with rakes and forks, and ‘meadow