ON THE WILD SIDE

BLACK-WINGED STILT

THE bird featured in the RSPB logo, the unmistakable black and white avocet, is rare enough in the UK.

But he has a cousin who is even rarer than that. A vagrant to the UK only spotted a few times a year, but remarkably this incredible bird is having more and more breeding success here.

This year they have once again successfully fledged chicks and with climate change pushing species into new territories it may become a more regular sight.

So say hello to the incredibly rare and aptly named black-winged stilt.

Where avocets are delicate black and white waders with grey legs and upwardly turned beaks, the stilt is something quite different. They look like what a child would draw if you asked them to sketch a wader.

Skinny and small-bodied, they have shorter straight beaks, black wings, white bodies and bright-pink legs. Their legs are ridiculously long – longer than other waders – making up far more than half their height.

Females have a brownish hint to their black wings, while the males have a green iridescence. They also have much shorter toes than avocets.

Their longer legs mean that they can wade into water much deeper than other wading birds, and get their pick of the prime aquatic insects as a result. They will only very rarely swim, but you don’t need to when you have such long legs. Their Latin name translates as “strap foot”. The legs are so long that when they fly, they hang out comically behind them like long pink streamers.

The birds bred in Britain in 1987 then had a near 30-year gap before managing it again, and have bred on and off every year since.

This year was no different. They need a very specific environment to breed – saline lagoons, salt water areas cut off from the sea. They nest on the ground in these areas.

Such places are scarce in Britain, but are now protected. Perhaps we will see much more of this vagrant in the future.