In the far distancer across the mudflats and saltmarsh of Orielton Lagoon the distinctive shapes of 12 eastern curlew emerged through the heat haze. The birds were resting at high tide.
A few years back it would have been no big deal to see curlew in the lagoon and the wider Sorell coastal area. After all, the curlews had been so common they were once shot for the pot, particularly during the hard years of the depression in the 1920s and 1930s.
These days, however, the curlews – the biggest of the shorebirds we also call waders – present a challenge for those wanting to see them. Numbers have plummeted by a staggering 95 per cent in recent years, meaning sometimes they are not seen at all in the areas where they were once common.
So there was a sense of jubilation when a small party of birders conducting Birdlife Tasmania’s summer wader count spotted the curlews. Even at a great distance – possibly half a kilometre away – they were unmistakable, big birds the size of a chicken with the gently curved bill which is symbolic of the long-legged and long-billed birds which make up the wader clan.
The curlew has also become a symbol of the battle to save all the migratory waders which is seeing their wetland environment shrinking on a dramatic scale. Waders are in fact our most endangered group of birds. Every year they encounter hazards from the moment they leave the shores of Australia and New Zealand for breeding grounds above the Arctic Circle in Siberia and Alaska, travelling along what is known as the East Asian-Australasian Flyway.
The extent of the challenges facing the birds is demonstrated by the fact that almost half the world’s population lives within the footprint of the flyway. Although Tasmania might seem a long way from these centres of population, nowhere has the decline in shorebird numbers been more evident than here. Tasmania is at the very end of the flyway and, because the visiting population is static during the summer, a fall in numbers is more likely to reveal itself.
Birdlife Tasmania has been monitoring shorebird numbers for half a century and has recorded staggering declines in that time.
Not only is the curlew in freefall but another once common species, the curlew sandpiper, has also been added to the critically endangered list in recent years.
The sight of the eastern curlew during the wader count in mid-February brought a faint ray of hope for the future. And there was more good news during the survey with another large wader, the bar-tailed godwit, spotted in good numbers. The godwits perhaps best demonstrate the mystique and mystery attached to our remarkable shorebirds. A bar-tailed godwit holds the record for the longest nonstop flight of any bird – 13,500 km flying from Tasmania to Alaska late last year.