The Roseate Spoonbill an unmistakeable species, and a rather stunning one. We don't see them on every visit to Florida, but at certain locations like the Ding Darling refuge on Sanibel Island they are reliably found. We were pleased to see several at the Celery Fields near Sarasota during out visit in April. The colors alone suffice for identification, even when the amazing spatulate bill in tucked away. Note the pale apple green color on the bare crown.
Another Pelecaniformes feature seen in some Ibises and Spoonbills is the gular sac or pouch in adult breeding birds, sometimes a bright saffron-orange in high breeding plumage. Here we see a suggestion of the pouch, lacking in color, and the bright red of the legs almost matches the wing coverts:
The birds we saw were all adults. Juveniles have white feathered heads and lack the red iris and bright carmine wing coverts. The breeding adult has a patch of pink curly feathers on the breast signaling alternate plumage, which means it is at least 3 years old. The head, neck, and bill in the second photo remind me of our Brown Pelican, and in fact the Ibises and Spoonbills were moved from the order Ciconiiformes to their new place in the order Pelecaniformes (See graphic below) .
My camera/scope struggle to get decent flight shots, but I'm including this blurred shot because it shows features not shown well above, namely the orange tail and the bright red rump patch:
It appears the Black-necked Stilt was startled by the sudden take-off. If one had only the briefest glimpse of a large pink bird it might suggest a Flamingo, but Flamingos have black wing-tips, like our American White Pelican.
Taxonomy note: There are 6 species of spoonbills in the world. The other mostly white ones are the Eurasian, Black-faced (Japan,Korea,China), African, Royal (Australia) and Yellow-billed (SE Australia). The Spoonbills and Ibises comprise the family Threskiornithidae, with the Spoonbills making up the subfamily Plataleinae.
No comments:
Post a Comment