Human cost of ‘predatory’ capitalism

WHEN, as children, my pals and I roamed the bogs, river banks and lake shores of Tipperary, Mayo and Donegal, we regularly came upon curlews’ nests and I’m afraid we may have sometimes filched an egg or two for our collections.

Lamentably, curlews are much rarer now although not, I think, as a result of our uninformed predation. Should they disappear as a breeding species they will be a great loss to the character of our wild places, to the pleasure of ramblers and anglers, poets and musicians. No longer will we hear that plaintive cry so often enshrined in the airs of pipes and tin whistles, that lonely call invoking the bare hills and still lakes of the uplands, the clear note in the air recalling a spiritual yearning especially associated with Ireland and the romance, often tragic, of our history.

I still regularly see curlews on the shores of my local, west Cork estuary, curlews and whimbrels, both, but the whimbrels, lighter, slimmer bird, with a shorter decurved bill and three stripes along the head, are passage migrants, while most of the curlews come from northern Britain and Scandinavia to winter here.