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It looks like a bird built by a surrealist: stick an oil can on a pair of angle-poise lamp legs and you've got a Curlew. It's a dull bird too, with feathers all beige, brown and browner. There's nothing flash about a Curlew.
But to hear the Curlew's cry is to be drawn into the mysterious spaces of these islands - the estuaries and moor lands, the twilights and mists. As its fluting burble rises from earthy depths to an ethereal plane which transcends both bird and place, it is the most evocative, most melancholy wild sound.
For me, the Curlew is beyond reproach. It's cry is an inspiration, a wild spirit of landscapes which still work a kind of magic and are the antidotes to the feverishness of modern life. It's plumage too is far from dull but finely patterned with the colours of those landscapes which make it both invisible and subtly beautiful.
At this time of year Curlews have migrated from moor to coast, where their long curved beaks are as adept at probing mudflats for food as they were in the upland wet pastures and peats. British-born Curlews head for the west coast and those on the eastern shores now have flown in from Scandinavia, Finland, Russia and the Low Countries to spend the winter here.
The Curlew is a bird of intricate detail: from the foraging of its forensic beak to its subtle plumage to the pattern of notes which ripple through its haunting cry. But even though it is such a defining spirit of the open countryside, the Curlew is in trouble.
We may have protected it from being shot for sport but we are still destroying its habitats and the Curlew population is in decline. Just as we are losing the essential but always subtle detail from the countryside, so we are losing this bird which encapsulates that detail. The Curlew's cry should rally us to the defence of the wild places before the melancholy it evokes turns to grief.