One of my favorite all-time birds is the Roseatte Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja). Found along the Gulf Coast, it is always a pleasure to find these birds when I travel to Florida.
The roseatte spoonbill is a large, long-necked wading bird with it’s most prominent feature being it’s “spoon bill”. The bill is flat and spoon-shaped, which is used to capture small crustaceans, aquatic insects and frogs. It feeds by quickly swinging it’s bill back and forth in the water, grabbing anything that moves.
During my stop at Ding Darling NWR, located on beautiful Sanibel Island, I got to photograph a few spoonies. At one location, a couple of spoonies were standing in the middle of one of Ding Darling’s ponds:
You may have noticed that there is a difference in these 2 birds. The adult bird, which usually has a greenish head, now has a “golden buff” head, which is the breeding plumage. The other bird, with the all-white head, is an immature roseatte spoonbill.
Photo Equipment Used:
- Canon 7D body
- Canon EF500mm f/4 IS lens
- Handheld, with IS “On”
- ISO (info not available at posting time … will add later)
- Aperture (info not available at posting time … will add later)
- Shutter (info not available at posting time … will add later)