Flier's surprisingly great pride curtailed (9)
I believe the answer is:
partridge
'flier's' is the definition.
(partridge is a kind of birdanimal)
'surprisingly great pride curtailed' is the wordplay.
'surprisingly' indicates an anagram.
'curtailed' means to remove the last letter.
'great'+'pride'='greatpride'
'greatpride' with its last letter taken away is 'greatprid'.
'greatprid' is an anagram of 'PARTRIDGE'.
(Other definitions for partridge that I've seen before include "Flier" , "sort of quail" , "1st" , "Peculiarly apt girder for the game bird" , "Flighty type" .)