Black and white and cute all over

Here's a photo to melt even the hardest heart!

Image: avocet chicks by Steve Dobromylski

These little chaps are avocet chicks, recently hatched on the islands on Moore Lake. You can watch them and their parents from the hide as they paddle about, feeding in the mud with their unusual upturned bills. (If you would like to use binoculars for a closer view, you're welcome to borrow a pair from our trailer in the car park at weekends, 10.30 am-4 pm.)

Image: adult avocet by David Tipling (rspb-images.com)

We've never had avocets nest successfully here before - they tried once before but the chicks didn't survive - so we're holding our breath to see if they make it this year. With five pairs nesting at the moment, and at least ten chicks hatched already, things are looking good.

It's a great reward for our team of wardens and volunteers, who work hard all year round to make Fen Drayton Lakes a welcoming home for creatures such as these that struggle to survive elsewhere.

Avocets were lost in the UK back in the nineteenth century because the places they needed to live were drained and they were hunted a lot for food and for their lovely feathers. Then just after the Second World War a few pairs appeared in the east of England to try their luck again.  

The spots they chose were RSPB Minsmere nature reserve and Havergate Island, which we now also look after. Pioneering conservationists, many of them RSPB staff and volunteers, met the birds with a warm welcome and all the protection they needed to start recolonising the UK.

This success story is the reason the avocet has been the proud emblem of the RSPB for over half a century, front and centre on our logo. It's a great symbol of our determination to fight the big conservation battles needed to save nature in the UK.

Just at the end of May, a bold partnership of UK conservation organisations (including ourselves) published the State of Nature report, a health check of nature in the UK and Overseas Territories. The report reveals that 60 per cent of the species studied have declined over recent decades. More than one in ten of all the species assessed are under threat of disappearing from our shores altogether.

However, as David Attenborough wrote in the introduction, "Although this report highlights what we have lost, and what we are still losing, it also gives examples of how we – as individuals, organisations, governments – can work together to stop this loss, and bring back nature where it has been lost. These examples should give us hope and inspiration."

It may seem a lot of weight to put on tiny legs, but our avocet chicks this year are just such a story of hope.