Meet the Roseate Spoonbill 🌸🐦
With brilliant pink plumage and a unique spatula-shaped bill, the roseate spoonbill is one of Florida’s most striking wading birds. Spoonbills feed by touch, slowly sweeping their sensitive bills through the water and snapping them shut the moment they contact prey.
This tactile hunting strategy works especially well in shallow, murky wetlands where small fish and invertebrates are concentrated, often during the dry season when waters recede. Sharing this method with the much larger wood stork, the roseate spoonbill reduces competition with other wading birds that hunt by sight.
Roseate spoonbills are gregarious, often feeding or roosting in groups. Their vibrant pink color comes from pigments in the crustaceans and other prey they eat. Protecting the wetlands where they feed and nest is key to ensuring their survival.
What's in a name?
The genus name Platalea is Latin and means "broad", referring to the distinctive shape of the bill; the specific epithet ajaja means "pink" from the Tupi language as reported by Marcgrave. Source
Platalea vs. Ajaia: Many authorities (AOU, 2002; SACC, 2003; Clements, 2005) have placed this lone species in Platalea in light of Hancock et al. (1992) and Banks et al. (2002). Sibley & Monroe (1996) and Howard & Moore (2003) retain Roseate Spoonbill's monotypic placement in Ajaia. Source
🔗 Learn more about the roseate spoonbill in Mote’s Animal Encyclopedia
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