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Eurasian Curlew | Numenius arquata
Wulp | Zarapito Real
The Eurasian Curlew is the largest wader to visit southern Africa, with an enormously long, evenly curved bill. It is a shy, scarce non-breeding visitor to estuaries and lagoons that takes flight at great distance, giving its melancholy cour-lee.
Voice
A loud, melancholy, rising cour-lee or tloo-eet, often on taking flight, and a harsh, sharp alarm. The bubbling display song with rising trills is a sound of the breeding grounds and is only rarely heard in Africa.
Recording: Lars Edenius — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
50–60 cm; the female is larger and has a clearly longer bill than the male. Grey-brown with dark streaks and spots on the upperparts, finely streaked neck and breast, and a white belly with arrowhead marks on the flanks. The head is fairly plain, without crown stripes. The bill is 10–15 cm long and evenly decurved along its whole length. In flight a white wedge on the back and rump, dark outer primaries and a lightly barred tail are prominent.
Confusion species
Eurasian Whimbrel Numenius phaeopus is smaller and darker, with a striped crown and a shorter bill that bends mainly towards the tip; it calls with a fast seven-note trill. Bar-Tailed Godwit Limosa lapponica has a slightly upturned bill. With short-billed males, concentrate on the unstriped head and the larger size.
Habitat
Large estuaries, lagoons and tidal areas with extensive mud and sand flats, as well as saltmarsh and shallow coastal lakes. It strides across the flats and probes deep into the substrate for crabs, worms and shellfish. At high tide it roosts in small groups on sandbanks. Very rare inland.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Scarce along the coast of the region, mainly in Mozambique (Maputo Bay, Inhambane), KwaZulu-Natal (Richards Bay, Lake St Lucia), Langebaan Lagoon in the Western Cape, and Walvis Bay and Sandwich Harbour in Namibia; irregular elsewhere in the Eastern Cape and in Angola. Only exceptional inland. It breeds from Britain and Scandinavia to Central Asia and winters along the coasts of Europe, Africa and southern Asia.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search the wader roosts around high tide at Langebaan Lagoon or Lake St Lucia; the bird stands out among smaller species by its size and huge bill. Approach carefully: curlews are the first to take flight and often take the rest of the flock with them.
Conservation status
Near Threatened. Breeding populations in Europe have declined steeply through agricultural intensification, drainage and nest predation. In southern Africa numbers are already small and appear to be falling further; disturbance at roosts on beaches and in estuaries is the main threat here.
Scientific name
Numenius arquata | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Scolopax Arquata; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Numenius was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Numenius is Greek, from neos 'new' and mēnē 'moon', after the bill that recalls a crescent moon; noumēnios is the name of a bird in Hesychius. arquata is the Medieval Latin name for this bird, from arcuatus 'bow-shaped', again after the curved bill. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.