ⓒ Eugene Cheah

Let us celebrate and honour curlews across the globe on World Curlew Day 2025. There are currently nine extant species of curlew, although this number may change should the Slender-billed Curlew or the Eskimo Curlew are officially presumed extinct. 

Curlews are emblematic birds of wild, windswept, and evocative landscapes—estuaries, mountain slopes, moorlands, meadows, and coastal shores. For generations, their haunting calls and graceful presence have inspired poets, artists, musicians, and writers. Yet despite all they have given us, we are allowing them to disappear. Loss of habitat, predation, human disturbance, and in some areas, hunting, are contributing to their alarming decline. 

Within the East Asian–Australasian Flyway, the flyway supports the Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata), Whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus), Little Curlew (Numenius minutus), and Far Eastern Curlew (Numenius madagascariensis) throughout their entire life cycle, across both their breeding and non-breeding grounds.

World Curlew Day was established by Mary Colwell in 2017 to raise awareness of the curlews’ plight. It is commemorated each year on 21st April, the date Mary began her 500-mile walk for curlews in 2016. This day also marks the feast of St Beuno, the patron saint of curlews—so named because, according to legend, a curlew saved his book of sermons from the sea in the 7th century. 

It is a grass-roots initiative, supported by major environmental organisations, to raise awareness of the plight of curlews and to encourage activities to help them.  

Please organise an event on April 21 and post it on the Twitter: @WCDApril21 or World Curlew Day Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/WCDApril21

More about the World Curlew Day: https://www.curlewaction.org/world-curlew-day/#:~:text=2025,Curlew%20Day%20wherever%20you%20are.