Flamingos? Nope – They’re Roseate Spoonbills!

/by

With their long legs and rosy pink color, it’s easy to understand why roseate spoonbills (Platalea ajaja), a waterbird species that lives in coastal areas of the southeast U.S. and Caribbean, are often mistaken for flamingos.

On their website, Audubon describes them as “gorgeous at a distance and bizarre up close.” But let’s be honest, in the world of weird-looking birds, roseate spoonbills are in good company. (I mean, have you ever seen a shoebill stork?)

Like flamingos, spoonbills’ coloration comes from carotenoid pigments in their diet, which consists primarily of aquatic invertebrates and small fish. Their feathers can range in color from bright magenta to pale pink, depending on age and location.

Their spoon-shaped bill is unmistakable, however. Although the long, flat, spoon-shaped bill may seem downright strange and even impractical, it actually serves an important purpose. The bill shape helps the birds to detect, trap, and strain fish and invertebrates out of the shallow, muddy water where they forage.

Like other colonial waterbirds, roseate spoonbills can usually be found in small flocks among other wading birds like egrets, nesting and foraging in the same area.

If you are lucky enough to have roseate spoonbills living on your site, you’ve got a great opportunity to help this species, which is declining in some areas (like the Everglades) and is stable but low in numbers throughout the rest of its range.  Here’s a few great ways your team can enhance habitat for these birds:

  • Plant native wetland vegetation, which will benefit spoonbills’ food by providing food and cover and by improving water quality
  • Install structures such as submerged brush piles and rock piles, which will benefit spoonbills’ food
  • Conduct regular surveys of the spoonbills’ colony to track changes in the population over time
  • Plant more of the shrubs and trees (e.g., mangroves) that spoonbills and other colonial waterbirds in your area use for nesting
  • Take measures to decrease disturbance to nesting spoonbills, such as by posting signage or educating employees about the importance of keeping your distance from nesting colonies.

If you need help tailoring these projects to your particular site, or just aren’t sure how to begin, we’re here to help!  Give our Conservation Strategy and Planning Department a call at 301-588-8994 or send us an email at strategyandplanning@wildlifehc.org.

Read more WHC blogs.

Habitat Design that Invites Exploration

/by

One of the best ways to spread awareness of and interest in biodiversity conservation is to provide opportunities for people to enjoy wildlife and their habitats. While unstructured, even “messy” habitats have their place, a nice-looking habitat will create a much more inviting environment that employees and visitors will want to spend time in.

The main thing to keep in mind is to make the project look intentional and inviting to exploration. Here’s a few ideas to get you started:

Make it more colorful by using a diversity of native plant species with colorful flowers and attractive foliage.

Make it highly visible. If you are able to choose the location for your project, put it somewhere folks will easily see, such as placing your pollinator garden near a building entrance. This visual reminder will entice people to visit the habitat.

Use plantings and maintain vegetation to create attractive lines and shapes. Install or maintain vegetation in such a way as to create soft, rounded corners and curving lines, instead of hard, straight edges with corners.

Plant seeds or plugs in “drifts” composed of one or two species or maintained mowed borders around the edges of plantings to create a more attractive, intentional look to large planting projects like meadows or prairie restorations.

LS_ROW_Exelon West Chicago2008 Make it accessible to users of all abilities. It’s easy to feel like accessibility is a burden, so instead, look at it as an opportunity to allow more folks to enjoy and learn about biodiversity. Ensure that both able-bodied and differently-abled people can get to your habitat and can use it without difficulty once they get there. Look to ADA guidelines or talk to a local disability advocacy group for ideas on improving accessibility in realistic ways, like adding braille to signage for visually-impaired users or providing a level trail with railings for mobility-impaired users.

Add structures that encourage folks to pause and enjoy the scenery, such as benches, wildlife observation decks, or friendly signage with information about what they’re seeing nearby.

Add a trail or boardwalk to make it easy for folks to get to your habitat, or to enjoy a walk through the habitat once they get there.

If your team is feeling particularly creative, you might even consider adding artistic features that celebrate habitat while also enhancing it, like these artful rainwater design projects created by a team at Penn State University or a pollinator garden shaped like a butterfly.

Read more WHC blogs.