With their long, spoon-shaped beaks, it is perhaps little surprise that the RSPB has nicknamed the offspring of a spoonbill a “teaspoon”.

It has been a bumper year for the snow-white wading birds, which have been found nesting and breeding in Cambridgeshire for the first time since the 17th century.

Once quite common in the UK, spoonbills were occasionally seen on their migratory journey, but no longer bred here because they were hunted for their meat and the wetland habitats in which they use their long beaks to fish for prey had been destroyed.