October 19 marks the 806th anniversary of the untimely death of King John of England. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry III, who was crowned immediately at the age of nine to avoid the throne being usurped by rebellious barons. Unfortunately, instead of donning the royal crown, Henry III had to be crowned with the only thing at hand, a simple gold corolla belonging to his mother, Queen Isabella. It seems her husband had lost the royal crown and other assorted riches when a rising tide inundated his entourage.

I used to think of the American Avocet as the most beautiful of all the shorebirds of North America. I still do. But now I will forever look to the American Avocet as the bird who introduced me to the fascinating story of how King John of England lost the family jewels. Join me, if you will, on a winding journey as curved as the delicate bill of the American Avocet.

Lest King John steal all the limelight, let’s start by talking of the striking beauty of the avocet. As a rule, shorebirds are not known for their eye-catching plumage, limiting their wardrobe to various shades of gray and brown and black. To tease out a confident ID, it’s often necessary to look to non-plumage clues like relative size, leg color, bill shape and length. But the American Avocet is the exception that proves the rule. It sports black-and-white wings that sharply contrast with its pure white body. Two black shoulder stripes add just the right touch. A passel of American Avocets flying low over the lake in the early morning sun become shimmering diamonds on a jeweler’s black velvet mat. In spring and summer, the male in breeding plumage dyes its head and neck a pastel russet color, adding a perfect accent to the whites and blacks. It looks sharp. If the American Avocet wore shoes, they would be tan, suede, with pink shoelaces, no socks. Its hat would be a Panama with a purple hat band.

As if its striking plumage were not enough to catch your eye, almost everything else about the bird says “Look at me.” Its body is a large, feathered almond perched atop two long, alabaster chopstick legs. From one end of the almond rises a slender neck holding aloft a small head whose only purpose, it seems, is to anchor a six-inch knitting-needle-thin bill. The tip of the bill curves upward as if someone tried to turn it into a ladle but then forgot to flatten and broaden the end. This curved bill gives the avocet its genus name recurvirostra, Latin for upturned (curved-back) bill. When it feeds, the avocet stretches its neck down close to the water and swings that bill back and forth just below the surface in a scything motion, scooping up small crustaceans.

Plumage, body shape, feeding style—everything about the American Avocet makes it easy to pick out of a lineup and a favorite of many birders. In my opinion, the only shorebird that rivals the American Avocet for grace and beauty is the Black-necked Stilt.

Around the globe there are three other species of recurvirostra. In the mountains of Chile and Peru you’ll find the Andean Avocet. In the Land Down Under there’s the Red-necked Avocet. In Europe and Africa it’s the Pied Avocet. Take away their various differences in plumage and all of them are spitting images of the American Avocet. But only the Pied Avocet bears the distinction of regal status by association. It’s a long story.

But first, you need to know a bit about the Wash. The Wash is a large bay on the east coast of England, an estuary formed by the confluence of five rivers. Not just any old bay, the Wash is a geographic focal point that exemplifies the ebb and flow of human interaction with places that ebb and flow.

Here is a one-minute overview of two millennia of Wash history.

100 CE: The Romans built large embankments in areas around the bay to prevent flooding and make some of the fertile lands near the bay more habitable. By the fifth century, when the Roman presence in England ended, most of these embankments were washed away.
865 CE: This welcoming eastern bay was an indefensible entry point for the ships of the great Viking army when it invaded England from Denmark. For two centuries the Vikings used this estuary and its feeder rivers to strengthen and consolidate their control over England’s eastern seaboard until 1066, when King Harold drove the Vikings out for good.
From the 13th to the 20th century, there was one effort after the other to drain various areas around the estuary, to make the sea conform to human ideas of how it should behave, and to transform the salt marshes into farmland.
During World War II, much of the “reclaimed” land was allowed to revert to salt marsh, to make the area less inviting to any potential invading German army. Churchill wanted no repeat of the Scandinavian invasion of the 9th century.
Drainage of the area commenced after the war until the late 20th century, when increased understanding of the role played by the salt marshes in flood control and wildlife habitat led experts to breach some key seawalls and allow large areas to be restored again to salt marsh. Much of the Wash is now designated a Special Protection Area.

Enter our characters of concern: King John, and the avocets. The Wash was ideal habitat for waterfowl and shorebirds like the avocet; not so ideal for King John and the family jewels. In October of 1216, while on a campaign to quell rebellious barons of the area just southeast of the Wash, King John was stricken with dysentery. From the town of Bishop’s Lynn, he planned to return for care to Boston, on the opposite side of the bay. He chose the longer but less strenuous route, first south and then north, avoiding the messy marshland of the tidal flats. His entourage, however, was sent directly to Boston in a northwest direction, straight across the tidal flats at the far south end of the bay.

It was a mistake. Several thousand men on foot, with horse-drawn carts bearing most of King John’s possessions, set out across the tidal flats. Even at low tide, the wheel-clogging mud and silt slowed their advance to a crawl. In a race against the incoming tide, they made it not even halfway across when they were overtaken by the sea, forced to abandon their precious cargo and flee for their lives. King John, though, had little time to rue his loss. He died in Boston on October 19 of his illness; or he was poisoned by a monk, Brother Simon, depending on whose version of history you read.

I’ll give you fifty-fifty odds that the King John’s jewels debacle actually happened this way. I think the tale grew taller and taller with each pint over which it has been discussed. But I’ll bet my last dollar on this: while all the king’s horses and all the king’s men were flailing in the mudflats, standing calmly in the rising tide were hundreds of thousands of shorebirds—plovers, oystercatchers, knots, godwits, curlews, turnstones, and of course, the Pied Avocet, close cousin of the American Avocet. For many of these waders, the salt marshes of the Wash were a crucial stopover point on their fall migration. Avocets liked the area so much that they nested there.

Little did they know that over the next six hundred years the ground beneath their feet would grow gradually more firm and less inviting. Between silt deposited from its five feeder rivers, and seawalls and drainage canals built over the centuries, the area of the Wash’s fringe saltmarshes shrunk dramatically. The mud where King John’s jewels were swallowed by the tide is solid land today, and the A17 will get you from King’s Lynn (formerly Bishop’s Lynn) to Boston in an hour. If you want to see the rise and fall of the tide in the Wash now, the shore is a five mile trek north from King’s Lynn.

Shrinking salt marshes means shrinking habitat for avocets. Their number gradually dwindled—not just in the Wash, but in other similar wetlands throughout the British Isles. By 1840 the avocet was extirpated in Great Britain as a breeding species, present only during winter, and in smaller and smaller numbers.

The recovery of the avocet in Britain began with the end of World War II, the bird’s fate once again linked to the human species’ penchant for conflict. Fortunately, the salt marshes that were reflooded near the start of the war never had to fulfil their purpose of bogging down a 20th-century army the way they did King John’s. Instead, they served an important ecological function—as a welcome mat for habitat-deprived wading birds. In 1947, just two short years after the end of World War II, the once extirpated avocet again began nesting in the Wash, after 107 years. In 1970 the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds made the avocet their emblem, and this graceful bird became the poster child for that organization’s habitat restoration and preservation efforts that continue to today.

Back on this side of the pond, by October 19, the date of King John’s demise, most American Avocets have already made their way from their nesting grounds in the western plains to their wintering grounds in Mexico, Central America, Cuba and the south US coast all the way to the Carolinas. But migrating stragglers can be found here and there along the southern tip of Lake Michigan almost right up until Thanksgiving. If you have time, why not commemorate the loss of King John’s jewels by making a copy-cat trip—say from Michigan City to South Chicago? Hit all the marshes and lakefront parks along the way, and you may be lucky enough to see one of these feathered jewels. Just be careful, when you eventually make your way to a local pub, to steer clear of anyone named (Brother) Simon.

Dan's Feathursday Feature is a regular contribution to the COS blog featuring the thoughts, insights and photography of Chicago birder, Dan Lory on birds of the Chicago region.

Dan's Feathursday Feature: American Avocet