Nature · Birds

Spoonbill

Summer visitor and passage · 80–93 cm

Platalea leucorodia — Threskiornithidae (ibises and spoonbills)

A tall white waterbird whose long black bill flares into a flat spatula that it sweeps side to side through shallow water, snapping shut on shrimps and small fish. Lost as a British breeder around 1600, it re-established a colony at Holkham in north Norfolk from 2010, the first regular UK breeding in roughly three centuries. At rest it can look like an egret until the bill shows.

How to spot them

▸Long black bill flattened into a spatula at the tip, yellow-tipped in breeding adults
▸Sweeps the bill scythe-like through shallow water with the mandibles slightly open
▸Flies with the neck outstretched — an egret or heron tucks its neck back
▸Shaggy yellowish nuchal crest and a buff breast patch when breeding
▸Essentially silent away from the nest, where it clatters its bill

How to know it

A long black bill flattened into a spatula, swept side to side through shallow water with the mandibles ajar

Spoonbill — Platalea leucorodia; the bill is the whole identification.

Flies with the neck outstretched, unlike the egret that tucks its neck back into a bow

Spoonbill in flight — the classic separation from little egret and great white egret.

Re-established a British colony at Holkham in north Norfolk from 2010, after some three centuries' absence

Spoonbill — the first regular UK breeding colony in about 300 years.

In the same family as the ibises, and known in old English as the 'shovelard' or 'popeler'

Spoonbill — Threskiornithidae.

Breeding adults grow a shaggy yellow nuchal crest and a buff patch on the breast

Spoonbill — the breeding plumage adornments.

All but silent, communicating at the nest by clattering the mandibles together

Spoonbill — the bill-clatter is the only real sound it makes.

Quick-fire facts

•Scientific name Platalea leucorodia: platalea is Latin for 'broad', leucorodia from Greek for 'white heron'
•It belongs with the ibises in the family Threskiornithidae, not with the herons
•BTO BirdFacts gives 29 breeding pairs (2017 estimate); the Rare Breeding Birds Panel reported new record totals for pairs, confirmed pairs and productivity in its 2023 report, with a recent five-year mean around 60 pairs
•Amber-listed in Birds of Conservation Concern 5 (2021) and on Schedule 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981
•It stopped breeding in Britain around 1600, drained and hunted out of the East Anglian marshes
•A colony established at Holkham in north Norfolk from 2010 was the first regular UK breeding colony in roughly 300 years
•About 105 birds now winter at southern British coastal sites, chiefly in Devon, Dorset and Poole Harbour
•Old English names include 'shovelard' and 'popeler', and the surname Shoveler derives from the same root
•The chick hatches with a short, ordinary bill, which only flattens into a spoon as it grows

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources

British Trust for Ornithology — BirdFacts: Spoonbill
Rare Breeding Birds Panel — Rare Breeding Birds Panel 2023 report