everything you need to know about this shorebird

Cyrano had a nose. The curlew has a beak. He is also recognizable among all! 10 to 15 cm long (longer in females) and curved downwards, it announces the color: it’s a wader! In other words, a great fan of digging in the mud of wet meadows and beaches at low tide, which it easily covers with its long legs and broad toes.

His favorite dish? Delicious invertebrates, earthworms, small molluscs, insects and even small vertebrates. At the end of February, the bird returns in large groups from its migratory lands to prepare for the love contests of the weeks to come.

Reproduction and first flights of the Eurasian Curlew

When the couple forms, it defends the territory surrounding the nest placed on the ground, among the grasses. The three to five eggs in the clutch have a beautiful olive-brown color which provides them with very suitable camouflage. The chicks that emerge will quickly fend for themselves. After a month, they are already ready to take flight.

Then it’s adventure for this wader who can live more than thirty years. Because if he is settled in the British Isles and on the Channel coasts, elsewhere he is a fan of long journeys. Towards Iceland, the Mediterranean basin, the Arabian Peninsula to India and South-East Asia.