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The Common Spoonbill.
(Platalea leucorodia.)
The Spoonbills form a branch of the Stork family. There are several species, one of which, the Common Spoonbill, formerly nested regularly in Britain and was then known as the Shovelard or Shovelar; an interesting old document of 1523 records that this bird then nested in trees in Fulham. It still visits the east coast occasionally in spring and autumn sometimes in considerable numbers. The Spoonbill wades in shallow water and searches the mud and weeds with the broad tip of its beak for vegetable matter, small aquatic creatures, worms, insects, frogs, newts, shell-fish and fish.