You know when you’re out monitoring Lapwing nests and staring hard down binoculars and a telescope looking for chicks amongst tufts of grass, and you see an Avocet with 8 legs ?
Well after checking that Avocets aren’t in any way related to spiders, I deduced that there must something else under that Avocet with 6 legs, or more likely that there were 3 things under that Avocet with 2 legs each. And of course it wasn’t long before 3 weeny little balls of down on stilty little blue legs came out stabbing at the mud for even more weeny little non-biting midges. These are the first Avocet chicks born on the Saltholme reserve, and so far we have 9 of them from 3 nests, with another 7 nests with birds still sitting. Sadly though, this area of wet grassland is not viewable from any of the paths or hides so visitors are not able to view the birds.
I did the best I could with my little £50 from Argos compact camera that I could, but it’s not the best photograph of Avocets.
I was expecting new Avocet chicks to be white, as they are when they are a bit older, and was surprised to see them this sandy colour, although it is very good camouflage against the mud. It was also interesting to see that even at this tender young age, they have weeny little curved beaks. It’s all enough to make one broody. But I’m not.