Costa del Dee!
The charismatic and instantly identifiable Spoonbill is among the new species breeding along the Cheshire coast
WHERE TO SEE THEM
These uncommon birds can be seen on coastal sites in north-west and south-west England and East Anglia. As well as the Dee estuary on the Cheshire coast mentioned in this article, RSPB reserves to visit include the Exe Estuary reserves, Arne and Titchwell Marsh.
in more tropical climates, but increasingly, populations are finding the UK the perfect place to breed.
There is instantly something exotic about Spoonbills. They really do look as though they should be wandering along the banks of the Amazon or sitting on a partially submerged Hippopotamus, rather than on the windswept coasts of north-west England. But, in fact, up until the 1700s they were found all over England, including substantial populations along the River Thames.
However, like a lot of species, they were also popular for their meat, and seem to have been a feast favourite of those greedy and omnivorous Tudors. It wasn’t all hunting for their meat, though; loss of habitat also impacted the bird’s ability to thrive in Britain.
Spoonbills prefer shallow wetlands with muddy or sandy beds, and as much of our wetland was drained for farmland or pasture, we lost one of our most charismatic large birds. By about 1700 the species seems to have disappeared as a resident bird, and it would be almost 300 years before that unmistakable beak would sift the shallow waters of Britain again.
In about 1995, quite out of the blue, a pair of birds that are thought to have flown in from the Netherlands and began to nest in Norfolk. At first, the location was kept secret to avoid disturbance and egg collectors, though as numbers increased and, thankfully, egg collecting decreased in prevalence, their populations began to grow. For the first few years, the nests failed, but it wasn’t long before more birds arrived and soon nesting sites were confirmed as far north as Yorkshire.
In 1999, on a nest near the Ribble Estuary, in Lancashire, a pair finally succeeded and the two chicks that fledged became the first Spoonbills to succeed in the UK in over 300 years.