‘The shape and voice of wildness’ – that is one of David Gray’s many evocative descriptions of the Curlew in his piece for the BTO’s publication Into the Red. ‘Mottled mud spirit’, ‘dressed understatedly in streaked browns and greys’ are two more but, as you would expect from a well-known singer-songwriter, Gray’s most basic response is to this mystical bird’s voice: ‘To hear a Curlew’s song as it carries across the land, is to hear, quite literally, a place being sung into being’. I sincerely hope you and your children and grandchildren get to experience that singing.