If you have ever walked along a salt marsh or a wet Irish bog at dusk, you probably know the sound. It is a wild, bubbling, haunting cry that rises up from the grass and hangs in the damp air. It is the call of the Eurasian curlew. Honestly, it is one of the most beautiful sounds in nature.
But we are incredibly close to losing it forever.
Ireland is facing an ecological emergency that most people simply do not realize is happening. Since the late 1980s, the breeding population of curlews in the Republic of Ireland has crashed by a staggering 98%. We went from thousands of breeding pairs to a tiny, fragile remnant. Right now, experts estimate there are only about 100 to 150 breeding pairs left in the entire country.
They are on the absolute brink of local extinction.
That is why conservationists are turning to a radical, highly coordinated rescue mission that sounds like something out of a heist movie. They are flying wild bird eggs across the Irish Sea.
The heartbreaking collapse of Ireland's curlew population
To understand why we are flying eggs in airplanes, we have to look at why these birds are dying out. The curlew is a large wading bird, easily recognized by its long, elegantly down-curved bill. They nest on the ground, usually in damp pastures, peat bogs, and rough meadows.
That ground-nesting habit is their undoing.
Our countryside has changed dramatically over the last forty years. Heavy drainage has turned wet, squelchy fields into dry, flat grass. Modern silage cutting uses fast, heavy machinery that sweeps across fields early in the season, crushing nests and chopping up chicks before they can fly.
Then there are the predators. Because we have altered the countryside, planting dense commercial forestry blocks and leaving food waste around, we have inadvertently boosted the populations of red foxes and crows. In a natural system, a curlew can defend its nest. But in a countryside overrun with predators, almost every single nest gets wiped out.
The math is simple and brutal. To keep a population stable, a pair of curlews needs to successfully fledge about ten chicks over their lifetime. Right now, almost zero chicks are surviving to adulthood in the wild. The adult birds are long-lived—some can live for decades—but they are slowly dying of old age without leaving any heirs.
Inside the radical trans-Irish Sea egg rescue mission
This summer, a new five-year partnership between Ireland and the UK took flight to stop this slow-motion extinction.
Instead of waiting for the last few Irish curlews to fail at nesting, conservationists are importing eggs from the Yorkshire Dales. In Yorkshire, the curlew population is still relatively stable. Conservationists can safely harvest a small number of eggs from nests there without harming the local population.
Why? Because if you remove a curlew's first clutch of eggs early enough in the season, the parent birds will usually just lay a second round. It is a neat biological trick that allows scientists to get eggs without reducing the number of wild chicks born in Yorkshire.
In May, the team from the Breeding Waders European Innovation Partnership (EIP) carefully gathered 40 wild curlew eggs from Yorkshire. They packed them into specialized, temperature-controlled transport incubators. These incubators keep the eggs warm, still, and safe from the vibrations of travel.
They were quickly transported across the Irish Sea to their new temporary home: the Centre for Species Survival at Dublin Zoo.
The delicate art of raising a giant wading bird from an egg
Once the eggs arrived in Dublin, the pressure was on. Rearing wild waders is incredibly difficult. You cannot just turn on a heat lamp and hope for the best.
This process is known as headstarting. It basically means taking the most vulnerable stage of a bird's life—the egg and the flightless chick stage—and keeping them in a safe, predator-free environment until they can fly.
At Dublin Zoo, expert keepers monitored the temperature and humidity of the incubators constantly. When the tiny, fluffy chicks hatched, they had to be fed a highly specific diet mimicking what they would find in the wild. They need to learn how to use those long, awkward beaks to probe the mud for insects.
When the chicks reached about 15 to 20 days old, they were moved to outdoor release aviaries built in natural habitats. This step is crucial. The birds need to acclimatize to the Irish weather, the local smells, and the sounds of the wild. They need to realize they are wild birds, not zoo residents.
Recently, the first batch of 20 fully fledged chicks was released into the wild, including at Lough Corrib. They simply opened the aviary doors and watched them fly out into their new home.
To keep track of how they fare, several of these young birds have been fitted with tiny, lightweight GPS tags. This lets scientists track where they go, where they feed, and eventually, where they try to nest.
Why headstarting is a desperate bandage on a deeper wound
Let's be completely honest. Headstarting is an extreme, expensive, and labor-intensive intervention. It is not a permanent solution.
Some conservationists argue that headstarting is just a distraction. They worry we are spending massive amounts of money rearing individual birds while ignoring the fact that the wider countryside is still hostile to them. What happens when these headstarted birds try to lay their own eggs in a few years? If the habitat is still bad, their wild-laid eggs will just get eaten by foxes or crushed by tractors.
That is a valid point. We cannot headstart our way out of an extinction crisis forever.
But we are out of time. With only 100 to 150 pairs left, we cannot wait twenty years for habitat restoration policies to slowly take effect. If we do nothing, the Irish curlew will be extinct before the trees grow or the bogs rewett.
Think of headstarting as a life-support machine. It keeps the population alive, putting 200 new birds into the system over the next five years, while we do the hard work of fixing the actual environment.
How we can actually help these birds survive in the wild
If you want to see these birds thrive, we have to support the people who actually manage the land. Farmers are not the enemies here; they are the key to the solution.
If you are a landowner or live in a rural community, here is what actually works:
- Delay silage cutting: If you have breeding waders on your land, delaying cutting until mid-July gives chicks a fighting chance to fledge.
- Install predator fencing: Temporary electric fences placed around known nests are incredibly effective at keeping foxes and badgers away.
- Block drains: Creating wet, boggy features in corner pastures gives curlew chicks the soft, damp mud they need to find food.
- Support agri-environmental schemes: Push for and participate in programs like the Breeding Waders EIP, which pay farmers directly for protecting nest sites.
We have five years to get this right. The eggs are flying in, the chicks are taking to the skies, and the GPS trackers are pinging. Now, it is up to us to make sure they have a safe place to land.
For a deeper look into how conservationists and local farmers are working together on the ground to protect these nests, check out this RSPB video on saving Northern Ireland's curlews which showcases the real-world impact of nest protection and habitat management.
