Where to see spoonbill in the UK

How to find spoonbill

The joke among people who look for spoonbills is that most sightings are of a white lump with its bill tucked away, doing nothing, for hours.

This is broadly accurate. Spoonbills feed on a tidal cycle and sleep through much of the rest, often standing on one leg in a group at the back of a lagoon. If you arrive mid-afternoon on a falling tide you may well look at a distant white blob and have to take somebody's word for what it is.

The trick is to arrive around the tide rather than around your own schedule. On a rising tide, or in the couple of hours after they wake, they feed in shallow water by sweeping that absurd bill side to side with the mandibles slightly open. It is unmistakable, faintly comic, and worth waiting for.

British breeding is recent and still small — a handful of colonies, mostly in East Anglia — but non-breeding birds turn up widely along the south and east coasts from spring through autumn, and the population has been climbing steadily.

At distance, the thing that gives them away before the bill does is posture: a spoonbill stands hunched and short-necked in a way a little egret never does. If you're scanning a lagoon full of white birds, look for the one with no neck.