A spoonbill is a large white bird, with long wading legs and a spoon-shaped beak. Latin name: Platalea leucorodia.
Spoonbills are found in the Netherlands from February to September/October. Via French and Spanish marshes, they migrate to winter quarters along the West African coast. Spoonbills nest in marshy areas, dense reed beds or hard-to-reach trees and shrubs, but also on salt marshes.
The enemy of the spoonbill is the fox and the polecat. But also nature, such as wind and rising water with floods so that the nests are washed away.
Spoonbills in the Netherlands nest from the end of March to the end of July, sometimes earlier. They have one clutch per year of usually 4 eggs that are incubated for about 25 days.
Spoonbills nest almost everywhere in mixed colonies with herons, cormorants, greylag geese or herring gulls and/or lesser black-backed gulls. The eggs hatch simultaneously. The young are ready to fly after about 7 weeks. Usually only 1 young grows up. After 3 to 4 years the birds are sexually mature.
It seems awkward, such a huge beak, but that of the spoonbill is a model of ingenuity. The bird prefers to eat sticklebacks and shrimps and its beak is perfect for just that.