The Critically Endangered Eastern Curlew

In 2019 I provided these two videos, together with texts and photographs, to inspire artists and schoolchildren to make prints for the national ‘Overwintering’ project (on migratory shorebirds). This two-part film concerns the Eastern Curlew, the largest wader and from the most ancient lineages of waders.

Margins:
The population of Eastern Curlews in Australia has declined by more than half, just in the last 25 years and Curlews are listed globally as threatened. Adult birds leave Australia late summer to breed in and round Siberia usually flying for three days continuously over 7,000 kilometres. Shore birds are in trouble, migrating through the archives is shocking, each year they find a different world, their sand and mudflat margins tarmacked or interred beneath concrete for rent or sale. Ravenous cities are terraforming. Global warming and rising sea levels are another threat.

Anonymous:
"How do you know but that every bird that cleaves the aerial way is not an immense world of delight closed to your senses five?" - William Blake

The speed of modern life diminishes opportunities for attention and reflection, and affects how we think, perceive and feel. Slow down, look for a single curlew, each one is unique. In ‘Being a sandpiper’, Brandon Keim warns that environmental action often ignores ‘care for actual creatures in a nearby forest or your backyard . . . beings with their own inner lives and experiences . . .’ It’s a challenge, curlews are shy brown birds that keep their distance. This one is anonymous, but the more we get to know about an endangered animal or bird, the more we are likely to want to help it.