“We owe the bird’s eventual return to some of the strangest conservation measures ever undertaken,” says Mark of the graceful avocet,

The delicate avocet is a now common sight on Britain’s coasts but it took an accident of wartime and a top secret mission to rescue this graceful bird from extinction, says Mark Cocker

Ican recall the moment I first saw an avocet. It was in 1976 at Minsmere in Suffolk, the flagship reserve of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. I was a schoolboy of 16 and it was that glorious hot summer when the sun seemed to shine every day without end. With two friends I walked to the coastal hide overlooking the reserve’s famous wetland scrape.

In the sweltering temperatures, the surface water and the first few inches of air above the sand-flats quivered in heat haze. About 50 avocets were scattered across the scrape and they were busy feeding or tending the curious pin-legged fur balls that are their chicks. It was the adults, however, that captivated me.

Their long lavender legs were rendered more insubstantial by the quaking air so it looked sometimes as if they were floating. The white of their bodies merged with the sun-flare bouncing off the shallows, and at times the creatures seemed more mirage than bird.

I studied in detail the intricate black patterns on the porcelain-white plumage and the black helmet clamped over the slender curve of the birds’ white necks. Then there was the ridiculous beak, needle fine, twisted upwards and swept back and forth relentlessly as the avocets fed. Everything about them seemed intensely fragile as if a good breeze might cause the whole flock to dematerialise like mist.

Today, I see avocets very differently. For one thing, they are widespread and much more common. They breed within half a mile of my house in the Norfolk Broads and just downstream from us a post-breeding flock at Breydon Estuary can reach 1,300 birds.

Yet when I encountered them in 1976 the British total was only 146 pairs, spread across six sites in two counties, Norfolk and Suffolk. Today avocets breed at more than 100 different places from Hampshire, all the way around the south and east coasts of England to Northumberland. They have set up outposts in Leicestershire, Cheshire, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and now Gwent in Wales. The average breeding total for Britain is more than 1,600 pairs. Small wonder that the Royal

Society for the Protection of Birds elected this wonderful creature, with its remarkable success story, as chief emblem for the organisation. Yet when that relationship was forged the situation couldn’t have been more different.

AVOCET ABSENCE

Before avocets reappeared in Britain in 1947, they had been extinct as a breeding species for more than a century. The main drivers for this were the destruction of their wetland habitats and widespread persecution. Avocet feathers were prized for making flies for fishermen and there are reports of punt gunners using them as target practice, one sharpshooter downing 12 at a single shot. In north Norfolk, which was among the species’ final strongholds, the locals were said to fill their pockets with avocet eggs that their wives turned into puddings or cakes.

In those days, the species was seldom referred to by its present name. Among rustic folk, the odd wader with the upturned beak was called a ‘scooper’, ‘cobbler’s awl’, ‘clinker’ and ‘crooked bill’. East Anglia’s great 17th-century scholar Sir Thomas Browne records the oddest version of all, referring to the ‘shoohinghorne’ as an inhabitant of Norfolk marshland. All this country lore was extinguished in Kent in 1843, when the last of the original avocets was lost.

For the bird’s eventual return we must be grateful to some of the strangest conservation measures ever undertaken. In the Second World War, the authorities flooded vulnerable areas as a deterrent to would-be invaders, while places such as Minsmere were used as battle training areas. Another odd bit of landscape redesign occurred down the coast at a spot called Havergate Island. A bomber from nearby RAF Boyton dropped explosives by mistake and blew up the sluice and part of the seawall.

By chance, avocets in the Netherlands had enjoyed repeat breeding successes through the war years and were looking for new places to settle. The waters pouring onto Havergate through the damaged sea defences just happened to reach a depth perfect for a few Dutch colonists.

When avocets were spotted at both Havergate and Minsmere in the spring of 1947, the news had an electrifying effect at the headquarters of the RSPB. They rushed emergency wardens to both sites in order to thwart the efforts of would-be egg collectors. Such was the hushhush nature of the operation that the birds were referred to by a code word – ‘zebras’ – while Havergate was disguised in correspondence as ‘Zebra Island’. In subsequent official accounts several years later, including a feature in The Times, the exact whereabouts of the avocets were still withheld.

Behind the scenes, however, the RSPB was straining to offer the new guests every form of hospitality. The scrape at Minsmere was

“This odd wader with its upturned beak was called a scooper, cobbler’s awl and clinker”

created after the organisation took over the lease in 1947, and although avocets did not return to breed until 1963 the place eventually became a major stronghold.

Havergate Island was purchased by the RSPB in 1948 and went on to become the bird’s main breeding location, supplying a surplus stock that secured the fuller avocet spread around England’s shores. The species has since become synonymous with the organisation that so successfully orchestrated its British return and was adopted officially as the RSPB logo in 1955.

Avocets are birds of rather rare wetland conditions. The species’ weird beak is uniquely equipped to sift aquatic invertebrates or crustaceans from shallow waters. Avocets need a complex mix – sand and gravel, freshand saltwater, open lagoon, marsh and mudflat – in order to thrive. Today those landscapes are almost all specially protected and it is no coincidence that 80% of all Britain’s avocets nest on nature reserves.

For these reasons they will probably never be abundant yet equally the bird’s breeding presence is now established in 19 different British counties. Up to 7,500 of them also stay throughout our winter and at places like Poole Harbour in Dorset or the Alde estuary in Suffolk you can see single flocks numbering 1,000 or more.

To watch one of these super congregations take flight, as all the long-legged waders resolve into a single bold pattern of outstretched wings, twisting and spreading across the sky amid a clamour of piping calls, is to understand that the avocet has reclaimed Britain as its own. And we are all the better for it. Mark Cocker is an author and naturalist who writes about nature and wildlife. He lives in Norfolk with his wife and two daughters. Books include Claxton: Field Notes from a Small Planet (2014) and Birds and People (both by Jonathan Cape)