People out for an Easter walk in Nidderdale must have done a double-take after seeing a man going for a stroll while wearing a giant bird costume.
Ex-puppet maker Matt Trevelyan took his former vocation to new heights at the weekend when he decided to dress as a giant curlew and walk 53 miles in the outfit over just two days.
But far from a jolly hike, Mr Trevelyan was instead aiming to raise awareness for the bird he was dressed like and warn against its extinction.
He told The Independent: “I've always made giant puppets, and I'm prone to saying things like: ‘I'll walk the Nidderdale way dressed as a curlew,’ and then you’ve got to do it.”
Mr Trevelyan, a farming officer for Nidderdale National Landscape in Yorkshire, started his walk at Pateley Bridge on Saturday and finished on Sunday at Brimham Rocks, just in time for World Curlew Day on Monday.
He wore a 10-foot-long costume of the Eurasia curlew, which is Europe’s largest wading bird, as he made his journey. The bird is known for its down-curved bill, brown upperparts and long legs, and was added to the UK Red List of highest conservation concern in 2015.
“I'm really worried [about the curlew],” he said. “Every nest, chick and egg matters.”
While Nidderdale and the rest of the Pennine chain have previously been a “stronghold” for curlews, they have faced a huge decline in numbers over the years, similar to areas in the south of England such as Shropshire. He added the population had been “decimated” in places like Ireland and Wales.
“We need something like 10,000 more curlews a year to become a sustainable population,” he said. “We need curlews to be fledging one chick every two years, and they lay four eggs a year that generally don’t fledge any chicks.
“One chick every other year. That’s all we need to have a sustainable population, but we’re a long way off that,” he added, calling for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to take action.
The RSPB released its action plan to save UK curlews from extinction on World Curlew Day, calling on “government and agencies to support urgent action to reverse the decline of our curlew populations”.
A Defra spokesperson said: “Nature across Britain is suffering. We are losing our precious species, our rivers are awash with pollution and many of our iconic landscapes are in decline.
“This cannot continue. This government is putting nature on the path to recovery.”
World Curlew Day was created by Mary Colwell in 2017 to raise awareness of the dangers that curlews face due to habitat loss, climate pressures and changes in land use.
The farming officer revealed there was an issue getting chicks to the fledgling stage during breeding season, caused by changes in the way farmers manage the landscape while making silage for cattle.
While Mr Trevelyan has worked with farmers to take later cuts and be careful farming around curlews, he said that predation was another issue, with mid-level predators such as crows and foxes taking eggs and chicks.
The hiker said he made his lightweight costume out of polystyrene and bamboo.
“The curlew was actually quite a streamlined costume, it's quite lightweight and I had wonderful support,” he told The Independent, describing the trek itself as “hard work”.
“I had a little bit of tunnel vision looking through a peephole in the neck of the curlew, but it's an amazing landscape, Nidderdale,” he added.
Mr Trevelyan is raising money for the Nidderdale National Landscape.
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