Skywatch Friday: Roseate Spoonbill < Florida, Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday: Roseate Spoonbill

Posted on June 25th, 2009 in Florida, Skywatch Friday

One of my all-time favorite bird species is the Eurasian Spoonbill, which is a summer breeder in the Netherlands. In the spring we used to go look for them in their breeding plumage which includes long head plumes and a yellowish breast band.

I was hoping to get good looks at their cousins, the Roseate Spoonbill, when we were in Florida. We only saw them once, flying high up in the sky over Viera Wetlands.

They were flying so high that we couldn’t tell what they were until we got our binoculars on them. Then there was no mistaking their pink bodies and spoon-shaped bills!

For more stories of the sky from around the world, check out the other submissions for this week’s Skywatch Friday.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 1:18 pm CST and is filed under Florida, Skywatch Friday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Jun 25, 2009
1:26 pm

#1 Darla wrote:

Interesting looking bird. Great Sky photos.

Jun 25, 2009
1:33 pm

#2 Rob Ripma wrote:

Spoonbills are one of my favorites. I just saw the first one ever recorded in Indiana last weekend!

Jun 25, 2009
1:52 pm

#3 Becci wrote:

I think spoonbills are so neat looking! I’ve never seen one before in person, though. Those shots of the roseates flying are awesome.

Jun 25, 2009
2:10 pm

#4 Guy D wrote:

Fantastic shots, thanks for sharing.

Have a great weekend
Guy
Regina In Pictures

#5 ellievellie wrote:

Those are very exotic birds – you are lucky – they make the sky even more exiting to watch! They put an extra color in the sky – the reddish-pink goes so perfectly with the blue. The wing of the flying birds – such a great symbol of the freedom of nature!

Jun 25, 2009
2:19 pm

#6 Sanna wrote:

Beautiful birds! Lovely photos. =)

Jun 25, 2009
2:21 pm

#7 James wrote:

Great picture and I love that spoon bill.

Jun 25, 2009
2:24 pm

#8 Maria wrote:

I love sights like this… simply serene!
~Maria

Jun 25, 2009
2:31 pm

#9 babooshka wrote:

What a beautiful unusual birds and so pretty in pink in flight.

Jun 25, 2009
2:46 pm

#10 Maria wrote:

I love what babooshka just wrote
pretty in pink… a great title for the photo! Do you mind if I borrow that one for just adding a little beauty to my sidebar? ~Maria

Jun 25, 2009
3:26 pm

#11 Amy wrote:

Rob – Aren’t they great? I should probably sign up for the Indiana listserv to find out about sightings there. We’re not too far away although I guess the Spoonbill was probably far south?!

Maria – If you want to post one of these photos on your sidebar, that’s fine with me! They are on Flickr so you should be able to grab the HTML if that helps.