I found all the normal wading birds and shorebirds on Bio Lab Rd today. Wading bird highlights were the normal herons and egrets, both ibises, and Roseate Spoonbills. We also had a fair share of Stilt Sandpipers, both Dowitchers, both Yellowlegs, Semipalmated Plovers, and Least, Western and Semipalmated Sandpipers. I also found a small flock […]
Tag: Roseate Spoonbill
Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja), Florida’s iconic wading bird.
Striking, beautiful, bizarre, fascinating – all are adjectives used to describe Florida’s iconic Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja). The pink color of it’s feathers is diet-derived, from carotinoid pigments. Spoonbills wade through the shallows, swishing their spoon shaped bills from side to side…feeding on crustaceans, aquatic insects, frogs, newts and small fish. Hunted almost to extinction […]
Black-necked Stilt Walking
On Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, at the same pool where we had seen the Tricolored Herons, Reddish Egrets, Roseate Spoonbills and Willets in my previous posts, we also found several Black-necked Stilts. Several walked pretty close by while we were parked. These birds can be a little bit of a challenge to photograph–the problem is they […]
Roseate Spoonbill Landing
Yesterday my father and I went out to Merritt Island. We saw nothing terribly unusual (we went in part to find a Neotropic Cormorant that was seen the day before, but we never located it), but there were several photographic moments. We went first to Black Point Wildlife Drive, and the lighting was pretty good. […]
Merritt Island NWR, 3/30/2013
This morning I spent the morning at Merrit Island NWR. I first went to Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, and that was pretty fun. The biggest highlights were seeing several American Avocets in breeding plumage and my first Eastern Kingbird of the year. The Eastern Kingbird was right near the restrooms, where I seem to find them […]
Espátula rosada (Roseate Spoonbill)
Otra especie infaltable en el ambiente de esteros en Cambyretá, no hay que hacer mucho esfuerzo para fotografiarlas ya que desde el auto se pueden obtener fotografÃas como esta. El individuo de la foto es un juvenil, pueden apreciar la diferencia de saturación del color rosado, el joven es mucho mas pálido que el adulto.
Merritt Island NWR, 12/31/2012
I spent the last morning of the year at Merritt Island. We went by Blackpoint Wildlife Drive and then Biolab Rd. I was hoping to find one more species for the year, but it looks like I’ll have to end the year at 259 Florida birds. Still, it was a nice, sunny day, and there […]
HOT, But Always Something To Capture
Bird photography in Florida during August and September tends to be relatively slow. Sort of that in between stage after the nesting and fledging has finished and before the migrating birds find their way to us from the north and the cool fronts have any effect at all. It is hot, and the heat and […]