Rosey’s Back,
and He’s Brought Friends
Story and photographs by Paul Roberts
T
he single roseate spoonbill that we saw a few times on Kiawah last
summer was back again this year for the better part of three months.
And, this time, he brought a dozen or so of his closest friends. The
group spent most of the summer vacationing on Kiawah. The roseate
spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) is a large wading bird closely related to the ibis family,
Threskiornithidae.
The Audubon Society describes them as “[g]orgeous at a distance and bizarre up
close.” The bizarre thing about them is their long spoon-shaped bill, which they use
like a master chef to stir the mud on the bottom of a shallow pond in search of tiny
crustaceans, small fish, shrimp, crabs, aquatic insects, mollusks, slugs, and some
plant material. Their rose-colored plumage makes them instantly identifiable in a
group of egrets, ibis, herons, or wood storks with whom they are frequently seen
competing for food in shallow salt or fresh water ponds.
Interestingly, they are not supposed to be here at all. Their normal range extends
from Southern Georgia to coastal Florida and the Everglades, to the Caribbean
and South America east of the Andes as far south as central Argentina. Another
population group is found on the Texas Coast through Central America. Until the
mid-1800s there were much larger populations, and they were more frequently
seen on the East Coast beyond their current range. Of course, there are always
vagrants—some seen as far north as Pennsylvania. But like the plumage of other
large wading birds, their beautiful pink feathers were highly prized for women’s hats
and they were hunted almost to extinction.
The Aztecs used their feathers in their tribal headdresses. By the late 1800s,
only a few dozen breeding pairs remained. With protection, beginning in 1940,
the population of spoonbills has now begun to rebound. On Kiawah, we have only
caught fleeting looks at an occasional vagrant and were surprised and delighted
to find a sizable group in residence for an extended time. Perhaps our visitors to
Kiawah were young birds looking for new territory for feeding.
The long legs and necks of roseate spoonbills rank right up there in size with
great egrets and wood storks. They are about 30 inches tall and have a wingspan
averaging slightly more than four feet. Like wood storks and ibis, they fly with
their necks extended. Most of the birds here this year were young birds with lighter
coloration and white feathers on the top of their heads. The rose coloration is due
to red algae in their diet. The mature birds are bald with a gray-green leathery head
more like their cousins, the wood storks, and when in breeding plumage, their legs
and eyes are a dark rosy red. They breed mainly in the winter in Florida.
I usually take my camera with a long lens when I go for a walk. In mid-July
on a walk in the Preserve, I ran into Bob Hill on his bicycle close to the Tower.
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Naturally Kiawah