Observing Florida's Stork Relatives in Spring

How to Watch Their Behaviors and Recognize Plumage Changes

Feb 21, 2009 Albert Burchsted

Once found, understanding the behavior and spring plumage changes of limpkins, cranes, ibises, spoonbills, storks, and flamingos is rewarding.

The stork family includes the herons and egrets and several other long-legged wading birds. This article provides an introduction to methods of watching them, what their characteristic behaviors are, and the changes in plumage that they undergo in the spring. The members of this group and where to find them are described here.

How to See Storks and Waders in Florida

Ibis, spoonbills, and limpkins are best observed on foot or from a canoe or kayak. Look for ibis walking between and on the aerial roots of red mangroves, in stands of black mangroves, along boardwalks and tramways, beside waterways, and in wet fields. Be sure to also look in the trees as these birds often perch there after feeding.

Spoonbills may be found in similar habitats, but will usually be found wading in shallow water in the open or perching in trees.

Limpkins prefer the edges of waterways in cypress swamps. Sometimes they perch on logs, stumps, or low in trees. They may often be found as the late spring rains raise the water levels under emergent ferns where they are difficult to see.

As sandhill cranes, wood storks, and flamingos are widely scattered, the best way to find them is often by automobile. Once found park the vehicle, exit, and find a comfortable place to set up a scope or use binoculars. Alternately, they may be spotted from boardwalks in reserves where the observer can come close to their nests and watch mating or feeding behavior.

Interesting Behaviors of Storks and Waders

Ibis may often be found probing their bills into soft earth for earthworms and subsurface insects, probing into exposed mud flats for fiddler crabs and small molluscs, or even capturing fish in their flexible bill tips.

The side to side sweeping of a spoonbill's bill is characteristic of the species and unlike the feeding of any other Florida bird.

Limpkins probe under the water's surface for apple snails – their almost exclusive food. Once found, they insert the curved end of the bill into the snail, cut the muscle holding the snail inside the shell, and extract the snail with a twisting motion of the head and bill.

Sandhill cranes look like a gray ball on a tripod when feeding. When alert, they raise the head erect much like an ostrich does. If they dance, it is a beautiful sight.

Ibis and wood storks in flight use both powered flight and soaring to move from place to place. The storks can soar almost as well as a turkey vulture (to which they are distantly related) when thermals rise off the land below, and can often cover several miles without once beating their wings. Nesting storks exhibit elaborate greeting displays in much the way that herons have. Corkscrew Swamp is the best place to observe this.

Flamingos appear to stand on their heads when feeding. The tips of their bills are hooked downward. They push the upper surface of these into mud and, while opening and closing their mouths, use their tongues to force the mud and water through the sieve plates that filter out the crustaceans, small fish, and other organisms they feed on. Their nests are built at the top of 1 ½ to 2 foot high cones of mud on which they sit high above the ground while incubating eggs.

Unusual Plumages of Storks and Waders

Adult ibis, spoonbills, and limpkins retain their species' plumage characteristics throughout the year with only slightly enhanced colors and exposed skin changes after the pre-breeding molt. Juvenile white ibis are brown and juvenile birds molting into their first breeding plumage during the spring become piebald with some brown patches and some white patches.

As juvenile sandhill cranes molt to adult plumages in the spring, the also exhibit piebald plumages, but except on the head and neck which change from tan to white, the difference between the tan of the young and the grayish of the adult are not as pronounced as in the white ibis.

In wood storks, the most noticeable change is when the pigmentation of the juvenile's bald head and neck turns form brownish to the blackish of the adult's.

In the spring, the young of flamingos, scarlet ibis, and roseate spoonbills turn from whitish with little pigmentation to the carotenoid pinks that are borrowed from the shells of the crustaceans they feed on.

Though structurally primitive, these birds exhibit intricate behavior and habitat use characteristics that demonstrate relationships between the members of the stork order. All are intricately adapted to their environments, yet delicately susceptible to alterations of their habitats wrought through lack of consideration of natural systems by us humans.

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The copyright of the article Observing Florida's Stork Relatives in Spring in Birds is owned by Albert Burchsted. Permission to republish Observing Florida's Stork Relatives in Spring in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Ibis in Flight