How does a curlew use its bill to find prey it cannot see?

The curlew's long, downcurved bill is more than a probe for reaching buried food. Its tip is highly sensitive, so the bird can detect worms and other invertebrates inside the mud by touch.

This means a probing curlew is gathering information through contact at the bill tip, and you can't judge what it is doing just by watching where its eyes are pointed.

Curlews also pick food from the surface. Surface picking and deep probing are two different ways of finding food. If one bird is picking and another is probing, that doesn't mean one of them is feeding better than the other.

Sources

• Curlews
• RSPB: Curlew species spotlight

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