How our Elan curlew fared this year
2026 was different from other years for the curlew of Cwm Elan and it’s been a challenge to find out exactly what has been going on in terms of breeding. The combination of a long, cold spring and the huge wildfire undoubtedly played a part in curlew behaviour and their ultimate breeding success.
Awareness of the plight of this iconic species has increased and we were fortunate to have a small but conscientious group of volunteers helping us to locate curlew and observe their activities. Added to this, our tenants have sent in records and peatland staff, out monitoring in the hills have also recorded activity. Tony Cross, our contractor has spent more time in the valley this year doing curlew and other bird surveys.
The spring brought a flock of 10 curlew to the Molinia bog at Cefn Gwair by the Craig Goch reservoir – the highest number we’ve recorded at one site. They subsequently dispersed and were seen at various locations around Craig Goch, displaying, chasing-off and pairing. Meanwhile other curlew were being spotted elsewhere in the valley, some at ‘new’ locations where we had restored peatland.
And then, towards the end of April a fire started and it spread, burning large swathes of Molinia and ffridd until it had burnt around 40% of the estate, eventually dying out after a week of destruction. We know that small birds lost their nests, lizards, frogs and insects were burnt, but we don’t know what effect the fire had on the curlew. Reports of curlew at Claerddu were sent in and it did appear that temporarily some curlew had moved west as they were not seen there subsequently.
The fire had come close to Rhosmeheryn and Hirnant but thankfully this area escaped the furnace and it was on 2nd May that the first nest with the first egg was found here, closely followed by a second nest. Tony with Iona Blockley’s help, fenced these two nests from predators and both were successful in that 6 of the 8 eggs hatched to produce 6 fluffy chicks.
On 8th May Iona spotted a pair on a site where we had recently restored damaged peat and where curlew haven’t been observed for several years. This pair went on to breed which was very exciting and there may even have been a second breeding pair at this site.
Another new site for us was Cwmdauddwr Common where a curlew pair bred near the road and produced 3 chicks despite the disturbance from visitors and road traffic.
It was nearly three weeks later that two more nests with eggs were found to the west of Craig Goch and we think that the fire was likely to have been the reason for this delay. These two nests were also fenced off, which helped save one from ground predators but the second, Tony guessed, was predated by crows.
Over the last few years, we have had reports of breeding curlew to the east of Craig Goch and this year a volunteer saw an adult and chick there on 9th June.
We had a report of an adult and chick on another tenancy on 30 June and this was the last date for sightings of curlew for Elan. Altogether there appear to have been 14 successful hatchings that we know about, but we don’t know how many of these chicks fledged. Tony Cross did ring 10 of the 12 chicks he found and so have hope of identifying these birds as adults if they return to Elan in the future.
