"I ALWAYS WANTED TO SEE AVOCETS. THEY ARE AMONG THE MOST ELEGANT OF BIRDS."

It’s International Bird Day, and we’re celebrating the beauty and resilience of our feathered friends with stories that connect us to their world. Today’s blog is written by David Waterhouse, whose passion for wildlife and conservation extends far beyond words. Not only has he shared his love for nature in this heartfelt story, but he’s also left a gift in his Will to WWF-Australia. We hope you enjoy ‘AVOCETS’ – personal insights and observations by David Waterhouse from his experiences in nature.

I always wanted to see avocets. They are among the most elegant of birds. My first encounter with the European species, the pied avocet, was a tantalisingly brief and distant view of a single specimen. It was flying across extensive mudflats. The year was 1987, and I was in the Old Hall Marshes, part of the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, East Anglia. By mid-morning, the sun was at last managing to assert itself intermittently as it sent out occasional strobes of sunlight between the clouds. At first, the lone bird was a long way off. Then, as it flew closer to land, a thin sun shaft transfixed it just long enough to highlight the black, pointed wing tips and the shining white underside. At first, I thought it could have been a gannet, which displays the same black and intense white tones when the sun strikes it in flight. A gannet was most unlikely off the Essex coast, even though a colony did breed at the Bempton Cliffs each year on the Yorkshire coast further north. No, the bird in my field glasses was smaller and more slender in build than the heavy, cigar-shaped gannet. As it came in a little closer, it was possible to make out the thin, trailing legs and the long, slim bill, quite unlike the gannets’ thick dagger of a beak. As it passed further south, it suddenly turned for just long enough for an observer to make out the long streaks of black on its back and wings. The pattern looked for all the world like the letter W split into four parts and then stuck onto the bird as if it were done by a child in a pre-school art lesson. Within seconds, it became a distant speck heading away to the south, but there was no doubting its identity. It was my first ever sighting of a pied avocet, and although not a close view of the bird, I was well pleased. A few days later, on a mid-summer evening that June, I saw more avocets. A small gathering fed peacefully on a shallow coastal lagoon near Cley on the north Norfolk coast. Close by was a long, low island of mud covered in marsh grass and samphire. No one else was in the vicinity at the time to disturb the tranquil setting. It was almost windless, and the mirror-smooth pool reflected the shapes of the birds as they fed by sweeping their bills through the water for minuscule prey. As I watched the nearest pair at fairly close quarters, I could take in the details of their plumage and form. They were truly elegant, long-legged creatures stalking to and fro in the mellow light. The gun-metal blue of their legs contrasted with their pied plumage. Black hoods adorned their heads and upper necks like hangman’s caps, but there was nothing sinister about them. The only bizarre touch to their appearance was the unusual shape of the long, thin bills they used for probing the water just below the surface with those sweeping movements. Their bills grew straight from their heads for about half their length and then curved upwards at the end as if some meddlesome child had grabbed them and permanently bent them as a prank. They were, in reality, specialised tools for detecting the tiny shrimps and such like by touch in the brackish or even saline waters, which were their preferred haunts. I only saw a few pairs, but in East Africa, where the birds gather in large flocks locally, hundreds and sometimes even thousands may be seen in the shallows of the big soda lakes in the Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia and Kenya. On the low island behind the feeding birds, I suddenly detected fleeting movements in the samphire and as I watched, first one and then several small balls of down appeared and entered the water. Avocet chicks. They must have just recently left the nest among the marsh grass clumps. Another emerged to scurry about on the strip of mud between the water and the island. The adult seemed not to have noticed their presence and continued to sweep for food in the water. As I observed the family and the other adults a little further away, a larger object could be made out sneaking through the grass. A small, brown head appeared with erect ears and beady black eyes, showing keen interest in the chick on the shoreline. It came out into the open, a couple of metres away from the oblivious hatchling, and immediately began to stalk it. It had not seen me, and I remained perfectly still. It was a stoat, a larger version of the weasel.

The adult avocet, closest to the chick, immediately saw the approaching danger to its young. Any illusion that the seemingly demure and delicate-looking beauty might be timid and a pushover was rapidly displaced from my mind. Giving vent to a torrent of loud yelping cries, the bird dashed towards the black-tailed killer without hesitation. The stoat stared at his attacker for an instant before beating a hasty retreat into cover. The adult avocet strode back to the water, still calling out its annoyance before resuming its bill sweeping once more. The bird’s loud cries had been taken up briefly by the other adults, but the incident, having ended abruptly, soon made them all settle down. The chicks, meanwhile, had been ushered further away from the edge of the island. The volume of the call was surprising to anyone unfamiliar with the birds. Two centuries ago, one of the local East Anglian names for them was ‘yelpers’, but as the birds declined in numbers and disappeared from many places after their haunts were drained, they were no longer a familiar sight, and the local names went with them. The word ‘avocet’ is not a traditional English name but is of Italian origin and introduced to Britain by ornithological writers after the local birds were eliminated from East Anglia and the whole country by land reclamation schemes, as well as hunters. Any occasional vagrants from the Dutch mudflats or the Danish coast were soon shot by gamekeepers or landowners as handsome additions to cabinets of stuffed specimens. These were once commonly seen in grand manor houses on country estates. The birds were absent from England for over a century and a half but, miraculously, a few returned from across the North Sea sometime during the Second World War, when no one, except defence personnel, was allowed to wander about near the coast. Considerable areas of Norfolk and Suffolk were flooded once more as dykes were breached as an anti-invasion measure. It was on Havergate Island on the River Ore in Suffolk where the birds first began to breed in England again – but nobody seems to know when exactly. Not that it matters much. Bird lovers were glad to see them back. The local people did not know what the newcomers were as only their forebears had known them, and the dialect names for them such as ‘yelper’ and ‘cobbler’s awl’, had long since died out. So, anyone interested in birds now refers to them as ‘avocets’, which is the name found in books on natural history. I must admit that the word is a little more elegant and seems to suit the striking species more than the older, local names. Today, in a more enlightened, conservation-conscious era, the noble avocet has responded well to strict protection and habitat manipulation and has recolonised some of its old haunts. After breeding in East Anglia, flocks of them will spend the winter in the Exe Estuary in Devon, hundreds of miles away, where they are joined by avocets from the continent. Sometimes, over a thousand of them may be seen feeding among other species and have become quite a tourist attraction. Many kinds of British birds have become much rarer than they were only a few decades ago, but some that became locally extinct or close to the edge have made good recoveries, thanks to conservation efforts. The recovery of the pied avocet is acknowledged as a classic success story. I have since seen large flocks of the birds in Africa and India, too, but that first sighting of a small flock near Cley and the glimpse into an aspect of avocet private life is still imprinted on my mind. It may not have recurred as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but at least it left a fond midsummer night’s recollection.

As you’ve read, nature has a profound way of inspiring us. For David, the avocet symbolises the delicate balance between nature and conservation.

David hopes that by sharing his experiences in nature, he can inspire others to protect it. You can help too. Please consider including a gift in your Will to WWF, just as David has.