Hail the success of avocets | The Wildlife Trusts

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Avocet family (c) Amy Lewis

Once a great rarity, the avocet now has top billing on many coastal marshes.

Time your visit for the very start of June to get the best chance of seeing the newly hatched chicks

The avocet is the epitome of elegance. Looking very dapper in black and white (or should that be white and black?), with a neat black cap and characteristic up-curved beak. Birds of shallow coastal lagoons, estuaries and increasingly inland wetlands, avocets wade in the water, sweeping that beak peacefully back and forth to catch the small invertebrate life that makes up their diet: a picture of early summer calm and tranquillity.

But appearances can be deceptive. The avocet may give the impression of being the elegant aristocrat, but in fact he is a pugilistic bully. Once nesting starts, it takes very little to make the avocet see red. A passing crow or harrier will be mobbed by shrieking adults, great gangs of them dive bombing the predator until it retreats. Other waders are chased off remorselessly: no redshank or oystercatcher stands a chance with a noisy nesting avocet around. Passing families of shelducks are given short shrift too, with the angry avocets driving the unwitting intruders off, adults and ducklings alike.

Always an uncommon bird, the avocet became extinct in Britain in the 19th century. A century later, parts of the east coast were flooded as military defences during the Second World War and while the expected German invasion never materialised, avocets did, taking advantage of these new wetlands to nest. Thanks to the work of conservation bodies including The Wildlife Trusts, this unmistakeable black and white wader is now firmly established on our coasts and wetlands and is familiar to everyone as a symbol of bird conservation.

How to do it

Time your visit for the very start of June to get the best chanceof seeing the newly hatched chicks, little balls of mottled grey fluff tottering around on oversized blue feet, complete with upturned beak.
Binoculars are essential.

If you can’t get to the special places listed below…During their migration in April and May, avocets can turn up on gravel pits and wetlands anywhere, so keep your eyes peeled.

Special spots

Be wowed by the UK’s first successful inland breeding avocets in land-locked Worcestershire. Since 2003, avocets have been returning to the saline Flashes pools at The Christopher Cadbury Wetland Reserve at Upton Warren each spring to breed. Although you won’t see their food, we think they’re eating mainly midge larvae and ongoing research shows that some of the midges and other invertebrate species at Upton Warren are rather rare in the UK and would normally be found in Africa and the Middle East. So while you’re enjoying the graceful but feisty parents, you can ponder how the midges got here...

Cambridgeshire, Grafham Water

Essex, Blue House Farm (where birds usually nest in front of one of the hides)

Lancashire, Brockholes

Lincolnshire, Far Ings

Lincolnshire, Gibraltar Point

Norfolk, Cley Marshes

Norfolk, Hickling Broad

Rutland, Rutland Water, Egleton Reserve

Norfolk, Holme Dunes

Suffolk, Dingle Marshes

Sussex, Rye Harbour

Yorkshire, Kilnsea Wetlands