Unusual beak of perfection
No bird seems to spend as much time asleep as the spoonbill. Virtually every encounter with this striking but sleepy wetland inhabitant begins – and ends – with views of its dozing head tucked deep into snowy white plumage.
Hour upon hour, spoonbills will hunker down in dank vegetation with only the occasional peep to show they are alive. Then again, when evolution confers the most preposterous of survival adaptations – a beak the shape of a piece of cutlery – perhaps embarrassment necessitates evasive action.
My first sight of a spoonbill in the wild – sleeping, of course – came 40 years ago at the RSPB’S Minsmere reserve in Suffolk and was a remarkably underwhelming event considering the species had always produced feelings of wonder on my part. Pictures of spoonbills sweeping their distinctive beaks in muddy water to filter for food filled my childhood bird books, alongside miserable accounts of how the species became extinct in Britain.
Drainage of ancient fenland haunts and hunting for the pot did for the spoonbill and they disappeared as a nesting British bird in the 17th century.
Conservation efforts on both sides of the North Sea have fortunately seen the spoonbill enjoy a renaissance over the past few decades. With the Dutch population increasing to 700 pairs in the late 1990s, it was not long before birds headed west and started re-colonising East Anglia.
Tentative attempts at nesting at various locations finally bore fruit with the first breeding success in Lancashire at the turn of the millennium.
Today, the Holkham National Nature Reserve in Norfolk is the epicentre of the British spoonbill population with more than 30 pairs. A total of 345 chicks have been raised over the last decade.
A walk along a coastal path skirting The Wash last month brought me the welcoming – and unusual – sight of a young bird on the wing with neck stretched out straight and huge, spatula bill pointing forwards.
What better adjective to describe the vision of a spoonbill in full flight than stirring?