It was an extremely pleasurable walk we took down Jervis Road the other evening. It was mild, peaceful, and beautiful, but the walk became even more pleasurable because there is very little traffic on nearby Hwy. 16 and as a result it was very quiet. Far off in the distance we could hear a “cur-lee” sounding call from what we assumed were birds. We didn’t know what they were.
We then saw a bird fly across Jervis Road to the field closer to us, but still from our distance we couldn’t really discern what kind of bird it was. When we got back to the car to drive home, the bird was still there in the field and I took this photo. It wasn’t until I got home and downloaded the picture onto the computer and enlarged it that I could see it’s very long thin beak, and that finally made me realize it was a curlew, and after looking at some of my bird books I finally came to the conclusion that is was a Long Billed Curlew.
I had heard that curlews were around in the Robson Valley, but I had never seen one. They are the largest of the shore birds, but they seem to prefer fields to shorelines. They eat insects and build their nests on the ground in the weeds.
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