Eurasian curlews face their most intensive welfare demands during the upland breeding season when incubating eggs and rearing chicks in challenging highland conditions. Understanding breeding welfare enables better conservation management.
Breeding curlew welfare involves the physical and psychological demands of incubation in exposed upland habitats combined with the vigilance requirements of chick rearing in predator-rich environments. Adults sitting on nests for extended shifts in cold, wet upland conditions experience thermal stress that is compensated by the metabolic heat of incubation but still represents a welfare cost. Nest abandonment following predation attempts - even unsuccessful ones - is a significant welfare event: adults lose weeks of reproductive investment and face the stress of nest loss. Parents defending chicks against aerial predators (crows, buzzards) engage in intense, energetically costly distraction displays. The welfare significance of breeding failure is not only at the individual level but also at the population level: a species that cannot sustain recruitment faces eventual extinction, representing the permanent welfare loss of all future individuals of the species.