Wading Birds

Anyone who knows me knows I like my birds. There is quite a change from north to south.

Up north, we have lots of wading birds - killdeer, plovers, sandpipers, etc. There are also large wading birds here and there - egrets and herons (great blue, black crowned night, and little green).

Down south, there are a lot more big wading birds. I see the smaller birds as well - the killdeer, etc., but it's the big ones that get the attention. One is the wood stork. It is beautiful in flight - bright white with black wing edges, but up close its head is grey and featherless, reminiscent of a vulture. 

Egrets and herons abound here - great, snowy and cattle egrets, great blue, tricolor, green, little blue herons, among others.

One bird you don't see is an icon of Florida - the flamingo. They are not native to North America, and if you see one it is an escapee from the zoo or Disney.

The large pink bird you do see in the South is the Roseate Spoonbill. I spotted a flock of them flying overhead when I was near the Gulf coast in Louisiana. I nearly drove off the bridge trying to figure them out. It was obviously not a flamingo (which I did not know were not native at the time) but I'd never thought that spoonbills *were* native. You can also occasionally see a red or pink ibis, but typically I see the white ones.

Wood storks, spoonbills, ibis, and cattle egrets tend to be seen in flocks, at least in my experience. The other large waders can congregate (such as in a nesting site) but don't fly in flocks normally.

The variety of large birds is one of the benefits of living in the South.