Many Hoppy Returns

I have a favourite bird. It is a curlew and his name is Hoppy. There are many reasons I love this drab brown wader. I am quite deaf and his unmistakable call is audible for miles, even for me. I scan the estuary and there he is. Hoppy appears to be less timid than most curlew too, so I feel like I have got to know him quite well over the years and he is special.

It’s early autumn and Hoppy is back. Same time, same place, every year. I don’t know where he comes from or how he knows where to go but as the summer light faded his gut told him it’s time to return. Bird migration is a mystery. The sun, the stars, the Earth’s magnetic field and even their sense of smell are all thought to help them navigate thousands of miles of featureless ocean and land. I don’t think Hoppy travels that far but it’s still good to see him again.

So, how do I know this particular curlew is Hoppy and not some imposter? That’s obvious. He has a foot missing, and hops. When I first saw Hoppy about four years ago, I wondered if he would survive the winter but clearly he has adapted well to life on one leg.

Hoppy may be resilient but he is in fact on the conservation red list. There has been a 30% worldwide population decline in just 15 years and breeding curlew have declined by 46% across the UK in the last 25 years. This is particularly distressing as the UK is home to a quarter of the whole European population and as a result the species faces ‘a high risk of extinction’.

Perhaps Hoppy got caught in a fishing line or attacked by a dog. I see this alot and despair. I would love to know Hoppy's story but it is irrelavent in the great scheme of things. It is the intensive farming of fields in which curlew nest that threatens their existence, not occasional acts of carelessness. Hoppy now appears to have found a girlfriend but with no safe place to nest I find myself wondering if I will ever see any little hoppies in future.

It’s natural to become angered and perhaps even inspired by hoppy's story; it’s much harder to see our complicity in mass extinction. Hoppy is a survivor and I wish him many happy returns but can his kind survive humanity’s insatiable appetite for more? More food. More profit. More waste... You decide!