The curlews are returning to their breeding grounds around us.

We've heard and seen the first curlews of the year. Each year the curlews return to the moorlands around us to nest on the wet moorland ground which is ideal feeding grounds for them and their chicks.

Staffordshire Wildlife Trust (SWT) manage most of the land surrounding us as a wildlife corridor between the Roaches nature reserve and Black Brook nature reserve. Curlews are a species in decline so SWT pays special attention to managing their land so as to best accommodate the curlews. Curlews like to nest in tall grass for protection, but adjacent to open land so that they can see what is coming. SWT ‘tops’ (threshes) patches of the tall rushes to make patches of open land adjacent to patches of undisturbed rushes. For the last few years, at our invitation, they have managed our land in the same way.

So far I don't have any photos of this year's curlews, so I've attached some photos of a curlew courting display that I observed in 2019, and some other past photos too.