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Roseate Spoonbill | Platalea ajaja
Rode lepelaar | Espátula rosada
The Roseate Spoonbill is the only pink spoonbill in the world. It forages in shallow, often brackish water by sweeping its half-open, flat bill from side to side through the water. In the guide area it is resident in coastal lagoons, mangroves and marshes in the lowlands, on both coasts of Mexico and throughout Central America. It gets its pink colour from pigments in its food.
Voice
Usually silent. At the colony and on take-off a low, hoarse huh-huh-huh and grunting sounds; also bill-clattering.
Recording: Paul Marvin — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
71–86 cm, with a long, flat bill that widens at the end into a spoon. Adults have a white neck and upper back and a pink body and wings, with deep red shoulders and a red patch on the breast; the tail is orangey. The head is bare and greenish, yellowish in the breeding season, with a black band around the back of the head. The bill is grey and the legs are reddish. Juveniles are whitish with a pale pink wash, have a feathered white head and a pale, yellowish to pink bill; they become fully pink in about three years. It flies with the neck outstretched, in lines or small groups, on quick beats alternating with glides.
Confusion species
American Flamingo Phoenicopterus ruber is much longer-necked and longer-legged, entirely pink to orange-pink, and has a bent bill. Young, almost white Roseate Spoonbills can resemble American White Ibis Eudocimus albus in flight, but that has a decurved, red bill and black wingtips. White herons such as Great Egret Ardea alba have a pointed, straight bill and fly with the neck retracted.
Habitat
Coastal lagoons, estuaries, salt pans, tidal mudflats and the edges of mangroves; also freshwater and brackish marshes, flooded grasslands and rice fields in the lowlands. It forages on foot in shallow water for small fish, shrimps, crabs and aquatic insects, which it sieves out with the spoon. It breeds in colonies in mangroves or shrubs, often together with herons and ibises.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
On the Pacific side from Sinaloa southwards, locally also in southern Baja California and in Sonora, and on the Gulf side from Tamaulipas through Veracruz, Tabasco and Campeche to the Yucatán Peninsula. Further in the lowlands of all of Central America to Panama, on both coasts and in large inland wetlands. Outside the breeding season birds wander along the coasts. Outside the guide area in Florida, Texas and Louisiana, on Cuba, Hispaniola and the Bahamas, and in much of South America east of the Andes.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Good places are the lagoons of Celestún and Ría Lagartos in Yucatán, the mangroves around San Blas in Nayarit, Crooked Tree in Belize and Palo Verde and Caño Negro in Costa Rica. Foraging birds are best seen at low water, when they walk through the lagoons in small groups, swinging their heads.
Conservation status
Not threatened. In the nineteenth century the species was almost wiped out in the north of its range by hunting for its feathers, and it has since recovered. In the guide area the colonies are vulnerable to disturbance, mangrove clearance and the drainage of wetlands.
Scientific name
Platalea ajaja | Linnaeus, 1758
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Platalea in that same work. Platalea is the Latin word for the spoonbill, going back to Greek platus 'broad, flat', after the bill. ajaja is the bird's Tupi name, as recorded by Georg Marcgrave in Brazil. The specimen the first description was based on came from Rio São Francisco, eastern Brazil.