  (abridged) We present results from two new near-infrared imaging surveys. One
covers 47.2 arcmin^2 to K(3\sigma)<20 whilst a second, deeper survey covers a
sub-area of 1.8 arcmin^2 to K(3\sigma)<22.75. Over the entire area we have
extremely deep UBRI photometry. Our K- counts are consistent with the
predictions of non-evolving models with 0 < q0 <0.5. The K-selected (B-K)
galaxy colour distributions move sharply bluewards fainter than K~20 and at at
brighter magnitudes (K<20) our observed colour distributions indicate a
deficiency of red, early-type galaxies at z~1 in comparison with passively
evolving models. This implies either a pure luminosity evolution (PLE) model
with a low level of continuing star-formation following an an initial burst, or
dynamical merging. At fainter magnitudes, the continuing bluewards trend
observed in (B-K) can be explained purely in terms of passively evolving PLE
models. Our observed numbers of (I-K)>4 galaxies at K<20 exhibit the same
deficiency, suggesting that at least part of the larger deficit observed in
(B-K) at K<20 may be due to star-formation rather than dynamical merging.
Finally, as we and others have noted, the number-redshift distribution at
18<K<19 of recent, deep K- selected redshift surveys is well fitted by
non-evolving models; passively evolving models with a Salpeter or Scalo initial
mass functions overpredict the numbers of galaxies with z>1. Dynamical merging
is one possible solution to reduce the numbers of these galaxies but a
dwarf-dominated IMF for early-type galaxies could offer an alternative
explanation; we show that this model reproduces both the optical-infrared
colour distributions and the K- band galaxy counts.
