Researchers from the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) Wales have developed a new and highly advanced drone technique that is revolutionising practical curlew conservation.

The drone work allows them to locate the nests of this elusive wader and work with farmers to protect the chicks from being killed by machinery or predators.

This has been developed by GWCT over five years of surveying various species across Wales, including deer, brown hare, grey squirrels, feral goats, grey seals, partridge, tern and curlew.

Using a combination of thermal and zoom cameras operated from a drone, the nests can be located very quickly and accurately, while causing no disturbance to the birds.

GWCT conservationists and curlew experts James Warrington and Katie Appleby have spent the breeding season working with farmers, locating and protecting curlew and other wading bird nests, and moving chicks to safety before they harvest crops or cut fields.

Curlew numbers in Wales have declined sharply and it is predicted that it may become extinct as a viable breeding population within 10 years.

A curlew chick hiding in the grass
A curlew chick hiding in the grass (GWCT)

To help curlew, GWCT is part of a three-year partnership project called ‘Curlew Connections Wales’, which aims to locate and monitor breeding curlew by working with farmers and the local community to find and protect nests from predation, alongside conducting predation management, across three sites in Wales.

Through this work in Montgomeryshire and North Radnorshire the GWCT has been able to show the viability of drones as a research tool that causes no disturbance to adults and importantly, leaves no scent trails that can lead predators to the nests, proving the success of methodology that we have been developing for five years.

The drone technology being used includes thermal camera, zoom camera, and laser range finder with pin-point location function. 

Because GWCT Wales’s drone has 200 times zoom, it does not have to be directly above the nest area and can be in a neighbouring field.

With the laser range finder on the drone a point can be placed on the hand controller screen, and from that we get very accurate location co-ordinates. This then enables researchers to walk directly to a nest using a handheld GPS device.

Curlew on Nest Drone Thermal and Zoom
Thermal image of a curlew nest in a field - shows up as a small black dot in the middle of the field - and a zoomed in image of the same nest showing the curlew on it. Both images are taken by the drone (GWCT)

James Warrington, GWCT Projects Officer for Wales, said: “Curlew nests are notoriously hard to find as adults rarely fly directly to the nest but opt to land away from the area and walk in slowly and usually through cover.

“To pinpoint nests through ground observation takes a lot of time, hours or days, as observers need to calculate approximate areas where the nest may be and then search that area, this leaves trails and scent that predators can see, smell and use.

“Using the drone, we can find a nest in five minutes without setting foot in the field.

“Our team can then help farmers to protect located nests with electric fencing, move any chicks from fields where work is about to take place, or carry out other important conservation or predation management work.

“Not only does this save us a lot of time to get on with other important tasks, but the farmer can also get on with the hay cutting knowing no curlew chicks are being harmed.”

The GWCT Wales drone team is now working on expanding the technology and liaising with external partners to develop AI recognition of individual species from the air. The team is also due to commence upland bird surveys in the north of England, and will follow curlew chicks and adults ringed this summer to their coastal wintering grounds to monitor them there.