counting coots

A popular wildlife programme is currently having a certain focus on Avocets at the nest. If the bird is not jusdadooorable, then I’m sure that it will be soon – as most birds on that programme are (although good on the male presenter for seeing the potential chick as a Kestrel meal).


I have seen these birds in the wild, and on more than one occasion in fact. I saw some this year and I saw some last year. And the year before that. Etc.  However, when I see them these days – despite their innate and undeniable beauty, the grace, the ridiculous yet practical beak, the incongruous leg colouring and even the wonderful name, I just don’t get excited by them. I call it ‘Avocet fatigue’, and I’m sure that I’m not the only birder out there that feels that way. Maybe not about Avocets perhaps, but I’m guessing that some birders really cannot get excited about birds they see all the time, regardless of their beauty/significance/rarity/charm etc etc.

I know why I suffer from Avocet fatigue, it’s because in the eighties I spent a month on an Island in Suffolk where there are a lot of them. And then I went back the next year for a fortnight. I don’t know how many there are these days but I have checked the BoEE counts that I have in my slapdash notebooks and there were 234.  And there were that many every bloody day.

So do excuse me if I don’t pay too much notice to them on the telly but perk up a bit when the raptors are killing stuff. Like the Hobby.  The one catching dragonflies that is, not the one sitting on a mans arm eating chicken.

Springwatch. You gotta love it.