Meet the volunteers trying to revive the number of curlews in south Cumbria
Fiona Marley Patterson met the dedicated team of volunteers and local farmers who are trying to protect this species of bird which is heading for extinction.
Volunteers in a conservation scheme helping save endangered birds in our region say "every day a chick is alive, is a success".
The Curlew Recovery South Lakes Project, based near Kendal, is a volunteer organisation dedicated to protecting Europe's largest wading bird.
However, the population is now in dangerously low numbers.
Last year, 18 breeding pairs were tried here. Upon the return of the birds, farmers like George spend hours trying to locate their nests for safekeeping.
So far this year, volunteers have fenced off 20 curlew nests - But still not enough for a stable population.
"That moment when you do actually find it, it is a magical thing"
Local Beef and Sheep farmer George Taylor told ITV Border, "After many hours sitting and watching because there's a very short window between them starting to lay and then the grass getting too long.
"[They are] some very anxious times prior to hatching and even after hatching, monitoring and making sure they are OK."
"We will strim the fence line every week to ten days. We just farm in a slightly different way these fields because we know the curlews like these meadows. We were turning out with them a little bit earlier at lambing time. The farmers low down the valley are predominantly dairy farms, they turn out earlier than we do.
"They have been so good letting us come in and fence that square off if we find it; give us permission to go and look for them."
Catastrophic decline
A small but passionate team is protecting them in the Lyth Valley and their main aim is boosting world numbers of the endangered ground nesting bird.
However, Susannah Bleakley from Curlew Recovery South Lakes said they are not breeding successfully: "We need to do all we can to help them. And nationally, in Britain, we have a really important breeding population, but they have halved in numbers over the last 25 years.
"So across Europe, their numbers are in really catastrophic decline. So they need all the help we can give them. But every year as we have learned, we've learned more about our birds and they do tend to be site loyal. So they go back to roughly the same area, maybe roughly the same field.
"We have got some leads now so we are finding it just a little bit easier to find some of our nests."
"There are so many things that could go wrong"
Susannah continued: "If we have terrible stormy weather or if we have sort of flooded fields. I hate to think about what might happen. I'm hesitant to say how many chicks are going to hatch, so I am just really hoping for the best.
So every day that a chick is alive is a success because they are very, very vulnerable in those first few days because they are tiny little fluff balls running around on the ground."
Volunteers say they were early adopters with new technology to savour the nests, including the use of thermal drones. However, they said not every result in the data could be trusted.
Susannah said, "When we flew it over areas where we thought there were nests, we got so many false positives, it became almost impossible to manage the data.
Other people have made them work elsewhere, so that is one to watch - but it is pretty expensive."
Instead, acoustic listening devices will be used and are much cheaper.
It is hoped a prototype will enable an alert that can be picked up on mobile phones. So the device is taught to recognise the alarm calls of the curlew and to send a message to volunteers to detect where these curlews are. Volunteers say this process could save hours of field work.
The first chicks this season will hatch soon, but will not take flight for more than five weeks. Although many will not survive, they have more of a chance than ever.
Watch more exclusive reports on ITVX here.
Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know...