Roseate Spoonbill Pink

No, that isn’t a Flamingo, it is even weirder. Meet the Roseate Spoonbill. Bright pink feathers, long neck and legs, and yes, a spoon shaped bill. You might be tempted to assume it is just a taxonomic hoax or something dreamed up from a child’s imagination but they’re real. Although there are a half dozen species of birds with spoon shaped bills, only one is pink. While mostly a South American bird, some do call Florida their home as well, and whenever we get a day to kayak out in the mangroves we always keep an eye out for that brilliant pink color. Spoonbills are closely related to ibises and both have a similar style of foraging for bugs and small critters by probing with their bills as they walk. Males and females of this species look the same, and they make their nests in the mangroves and bushes on the coast. Spoonbills form social groups and forage and roost in groups of a dozen or so all the way up to over a hundred individuals.