Pied avocet

Avocets eat tiny animals that live in water.

They swing their beak from side to side to catch them.

Avocets eat mostly small animals that live in water: insects and their larvae (young), crustaceans (animals such as crabs and shrimp), worms and molluscs. Sometimes they eat small fish, and some plant matter such as seeds and small roots.

To feed, an avocet walks through shallow water and sweeps its beak from side to side. This sifts tiny animals out of the mud.

The diet is mainly aquatic invertebrates: aquatic insects such as small beetles, midges and brine flies, crustaceans such as Corophium, oligochaete and polychaete worms, and molluscs, plus small fish such as sole and plant matter such as seeds and small roots (IUCN, citing del Hoyo et al. 1996, Johnsgard et al. 1981 and Urban et al. 1986). The RSPB sums the diet up as aquatic insects and their larvae, crustaceans and worms.

The BTO describes avocets sweeping the bill from side to side in shallow water to sift tiny invertebrates from the mud. Outside the breeding season they forage in groups of 5 to 30 birds (Urban et al. 1986, via IUCN).

Many avocets travel south for the winter.

They like to stay together in flocks.

Avocets that nest in the north travel south between August and October and come back between March and May. On the way they stop at certain places in large numbers. In much of Africa and in parts of western Europe, avocets can be found all year.

Avocets are sociable. They travel in loose flocks, feed in groups of about 5 to 30, and gather in flocks of several thousand birds to rest.

The IUCN codes the pied avocet as a full migrant and congregatory. Northern populations leave between August and October and return between March and May, staging on the way in large numbers at certain sites, while the species is present all year in much of its African range and in parts of western Europe (Hayman et al. 1986; del Hoyo et al. 1996). It stays gregarious on passage and in winter, migrating in loose flocks, foraging in groups of 5 to 30 and roosting in flocks of several thousand (Hayman et al. 1986; Urban et al. 1986).

The BTO notes that birds from Europe join the UK's winter population, which grew by 174% from 1998 to 2023. The RSPB adds that avocets seem undeterred by watching eyes and will nest close to nature reserve hides.

Listen to the sound at the start of this page.

It is a real avocet calling in England.

At the start of this page you can play a real recording of a pied avocet's call. Lawrence Shove recorded it on Havergate Island in Suffolk, England, in the 1960s, and the recording is kept by the British Library.

Avocets make more than one kind of call. The British Trust for Ornithology lists two main ones on its avocet page: an ordinary call and an alarm call.

The recording on this page was made by Lawrence Shove on Havergate Island, Suffolk, England, in the 1960s (British Library, shelfmark W1CDR0001419, shared on Wikimedia Commons). The archive describes it as the call of an avocet. The BTO lists two main vocalizations for the species, a call and an alarm call, with example recordings on its BirdFacts page.

For a time, no avocets nested in Britain.

In 1947 they came back. People protected them, and now many more nest there.

Avocets had died out as a nesting bird in the United Kingdom. In 1947 they began nesting again on the coast of Suffolk, in eastern England. With intensive protection and help, they spread north and west, and about 1,950 pairs nested in the UK in 2013 to 2017.

The avocet is the emblem of the RSPB, a bird conservation charity, and you can see it in the RSPB's logo.

The RSPB says the avocet had been extinct as a UK breeding bird before it recolonized Suffolk in 1947, and that its return and increase since the 1940s is one of the most successful conservation and protection projects; the bird is the RSPB's emblem. With intensive protection it has spread north and west: the BTO gives about 1,950 UK breeding pairs (2013 to 2017), an RBBP five-year mean of 2,138 pairs for 2015 to 2019, and first breeding in Scotland in 2018.

The RSPB says the avocet's success depends on managed wetlands, with more than half of the UK breeding population on RSPB reserves alone, and that nesting sites are increasingly threatened by coastal flooding.

There are lots of pied avocets.

Dirty water and building on wetlands can harm the places where they live.

The pied avocet is listed as least concern. There may be about 280,000 to 470,000 avocets in the world, and scientists do not know whether their numbers are going up or down.

In Europe, polluted wetlands are a threat. Some important places where avocets spend the winter are threatened by building, land reclamation (turning wet places into dry land), pollution, disturbance by people and rivers carrying less water.

BirdLife International assessed Recurvirostra avosetta as Least Concern for the IUCN Red List (assessed 4 September 2020, published 2021): an extremely large range and a very large population whose trend is unknown but not thought to be falling fast enough to approach the thresholds. The global population is about 280,000 to 470,000 individuals (Wetlands International 2015); Europe holds about 58,400 to 74,300 pairs (BirdLife International 2015). Generation length is 6.7 years.

The IUCN names pollution of European wetlands with PCBs, insecticides, selenium, lead and mercury, and, at important wintering sites such as Portugal and the Yellow Sea, infrastructure development, land reclamation, pollution, human disturbance and reduced river flows. Outbreaks of avian botulism or bird flu may be a threat in future. Artificial nesting sites such as shingle beaches, islands and rafts attract breeding pairs, and breeding numbers have risen where cattle graze coastal grasslands, possibly because shorter plants help the birds spot predators (Olsen and Schmidt 2004).