{"id":39149,"date":"2013-05-10T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?guid=32449dc75d9c209d33005c642a41fb75"},"modified":"2019-12-22T22:46:46","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T09:46:46","slug":"roseate-spoonbill-platalea-ajaja-floridas-iconic-wading-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/roseate-spoonbill-platalea-ajaja-floridas-iconic-wading-bird\/","title":{"rendered":"Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja), Florida\u2019s iconic wading bird."},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Spoonbills wade through the shallows, swishing their spoon shaped bills from side to side…feeding on crustaceans, aquatic insects, frogs, newts and small fish.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Hunted almost to extinction by “plume hunters,” spoonbills have made an impressive recovery. Feathers were worth $80 an ounce and Florida’s birds were hunted unmercilessly.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Spoonbills are a neo-tropical species with the northern edge of their range in Mexico and Florida.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Florida’s wading birds are indicator species for mercury contamination in the Everglades. In the last ten years this has improved thanks to better agricultural practices, protective regulations and accurate monitoring.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) – photo by Olivia Scott<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Good places to look for Roseate Spoonbills….Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, Myakka River State Park, and The Celery Fields in Sarasota.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) – photo by Olivia Scott<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Always something interesting to see in our “Natural Florida.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":2146441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[4423,2383,3196,7754,33,2668],"class_list":["post-39149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-mercury-contamination","tag-myakka-river-state-park","tag-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-platalea-ajaja","tag-roseate-spoonbill","tag-steven-scott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2146441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}