From aviation to avocets in the skies

RAF flypasts have been a neck-craning spectacle this spring as the nation reached for the skies to mark Victory in Europe 80 years ago.

- STUART WINTER

Another less thunderous but equally thrilling aerial display was a reminder of an unexpected wartime dividend - the successful conquest of Britain by avocets.

Watching a pair in all their monochrome glory performing a courtship chase around a sand quarry about as far from the sea as you can get shows how successfully these shorebirds have recolonised the country.

Avocets were driven to extinction in Britain back in the early 1800s by nest-raiders who prized the birds' eggs for pancake-making.