AVOCET RESET

SEABIRD'S NUMBERS CLIMBING AFTER SECOND WORLD WAR ALLOWED IT TO RE-ESTABLISH ITSELF IN THE UK

- Stuart Winter

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.

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.