A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
975 entries
avocet
A tall, slender black-and-white wading bird on pale blue legs, with a fine bill that curves upward. It feeds by sweeping the bill side to side through shallow water and soft mud and snapping shut on whatever it touches — a method that works without sight, which is why avocets keep feeding after dark.
Etymology
From French avocette, from Italian avosetta, recorded in the dialect of Ferrara — and past that the trail goes cold. The dictionaries all say “of uncertain origin,” with a suggestion that it may somehow rest on Latin avis, bird, which is the kind of guess people make when they have run out.
Notes
Avocets stopped breeding in Britain in the nineteenth century and came back in 1947, at Havergate Island and Minsmere in Suffolk — marshes flooded for wartime defense and then left that way. The first nests were guarded in secret by former servicemen under the code name Operation Zebra.