This pair of young Roseate Spoonbills looked quite relaxed as they strolled through the marsh at Merritt Island NWR. These unique pink wading birds use their spatula-shaped bills for foraging in the shallow water, catching their prey by tactolocation.Audubon.org calls Roseate Spoonbills “Gorgeous at a distance and bizarre up close.” The young Rosies are distinguished from older […]
Tag Archives: Roseate Spoonbill
I just can’t get enough of the brilliant pink Roseate Spoonbills, and most birders and visitors to our area feel the same way!The young Spoonie above was getting his bearings on a tall snag on a recent gloomy late afternoon. Looked like he was trying to figure out how to avoid the impending rainstorm.Four days later, this […]
This lovely Roseate Spoonbill was just standing there, high up on a snag, the other evening. I didn’t manage to capture him in flight, or to capture any spectacular show of fluffing up his feathers. But that’s okay . . . just watching him rest there for awhile was enough to brighten my day~! To […]
This charmer was seen wading – and posing – at Merritt Island NWR. Of the world’s six species of Spoonbills, the uniquely beautiful Roseate Spoonbill is the only one found in North America – and the only one that is pink! Like many other wading birds, Roseate Spoonbills were victims of the plume hunting trade in the […]
Lucky me – this lovely Roseate Spoonbill emerged out of the reeds and was the first bird I spied on my walk today. Though he spent most of his time with his head down, foraging in the shallow water, I noticed the broken tip of his large spatula-shaped bill right away.I got thinking about a Roseate Spoonbill I’d seen last […]
Sometimes the weather doesn’t look great for birding when you set out in the morning. But you just never know what you will see . . .A few minutes into my walk, a fellow birder pointed out that a Roseate Spoonbill had just flown in near the entrance – so I turned back, of course!Right there […]
We visited the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge for the first time the other day. The Refuge is located about 3 hours north of us, not far from the Kennedy Space Center, near Titusville, Florida. What a magical place! I will need to add multiple posts in order to show the wonderful diversity of birds – and the […]
All of sudden, there they were – a flurry of pink as several juvenile Roseate Spoonbills came swooping in, jockeying for the best position as they settled onto the pond.The population of these magnificent birds was greatly reduced a little over a century ago, when they were hunted for their feathers at the height of […]
While watching some of my fine-looking bird friends just before a rain shower the other evening, I got to wondering about the origin of the expression “fine feathered friends”. As a child, I learned from my father that we “look it up” if we want to find out about something. I recall running often to the bookshelf […]
I just love living so close to our wetland preserves and sanctuaries. So many miracles of creation – every outing is a joy~!
Birder's Journey 