252 THE AVOCET 
FAMILY SCOLOPACIDA 
THE AVOCET 
RECURVIROSTRA AVOCETTA 
General plumage white; crown, nape, scapulars, lesser wing-coverts, and 
primaries, black; bill black; irides reddish brown; feet bluish ash. 
Length eighteen inches. Eggs olive-brown, blotched and spotted with 
dusky. 
Tuts bird has become so rare, that having recently applied to two 
several collectors in Norfolk, once the headquarters of the Avocet, 
to know if they could procure me a specimen, I was told by one that 
they were not seen oftener than once in seven years—by the other, 
that it was very rare, and if attainable at all could not be purchased 
for less than five pounds. In Ray’s time it was not unfrequent on 
the eastern maritime coasts. Small flocks still arrive in May and now 
and again in the autumn, but collectors never allow them to breed. 
They used to rest on the flat shores of Kent and Sussex. Sir 
Thomas Browne says of it: ‘ Avoseta, called shoeing horn, a tall 
black and white bird, with a bill semicircularly reclining or bowed 
upward; so that it is not easy to conceive how it can feed; a 
summer marsh bird, and not unfrequent in marsh land.’ Pennant, 
writing of the same bird, says: ‘ These birds are frequent in the 
winter on the shores of this kingdom; in Gloucestershire, at the 
Severn’s mouth; and sometimes on the lakes of Shropshire. We 
have seen them in considerable numbers in the breeding season near 
Fossdike Wash, in Lincolnshire. Like the Lapwing, when disturbed, 
they flew over our heads, carrying their necks and long legs quite 
extended, and made a shrill noise (twit) twice repeated, during the 
whole time. The country people for this reason call them Yelpers, 
and sometimes distinguish them by the name of Picarini. They 
feed on worms and insects, which they suck with their bills out of 
the sand; their search after food is frequently to be discovered 
on our shores by alternate semicircular marks in the sand, which 
show their progress.1 They lay three or four eggs, about the size of 
those of a Pigeon, white, tinged with green and marked with large 
black spots.’ Even so recent an authority as Yarrell remembers 
having found in the marshes near Rye a young one of this species, © 
which appeared to have just been hatched; he took it up in his 
hands, while the old birds kept flying round him. 
The Avocet is met with throughout a great part of the Old World, 
1 It is not a little singular that the Spoonbill, a bird which strongly con- 
trasts with the Avocet in the form of its bill, ploughs the sand from one side 
to another, while hunting for its food. 
