Pied Avocet

Identification

A black-and-white wader that is hard to confuse with anything: a clean white body, a black cap running down the nape, black wing panels, and a bold black band across the upper breast. The legs are long and pale blue-grey, and the bill is the giveaway — slender, black and strongly recurved upward. In flight the pattern reads as three crisp blocks of black and white. Juveniles carry grey-brown fringes on the black feathers and look softer-edged than adults.

Avocets feed in shallow, often brackish water, sweeping the upturned bill from side to side just below the surface to catch small crustaceans, insect larvae and worms; the flexible bill tip is packed with touch receptors, so the bird finds food without seeing it. They nest colonially on bare islands, low banks and salt-pan edges, sometimes almost at the waterline, and defend the colony fiercely, dive-bombing intruders while giving a ringing, flute-like alarm. The species is famous for recolonising Britain in the 1940s after decades of absence, on flooded coastal marshland created by wartime defences.

Look for it on shallow coastal lagoons, saltmarsh pools and flooded gravel pits with bare islands — it is rarely far from brackish water. Spring and summer are best, when birds are noisy and visible around the colony, but some estuaries hold good numbers through winter. A reliable clue is the feeding action itself: that rhythmic sideways sweep of the bill, unlike anything else on the marsh.