Florida's biggest roseate spoonbill nursery is near us, but the shrimp-colored babies need just the right conditions to survive.
By THERESA BLACKWELL
Published April 30, 2004
GIBSONTON - In the early morning chill, just north of the Big Bend power plant, a boat passes the steaming stacks of Cargill Industries, then hurries toward a natural wonder - the Alafia Banks Bird Sanctuary.
It's an odd place to find an environmental comeback. Bird and Sunken islands were created with spoils discarded when a channel was dredged in the late 1920s. They sit in the shadows of heavy industry, overgrown with Brazilian pepper trees.
Still, 16 species of birds find no better place to raise their young. The sanctuary is home to Florida's largest batch of roseate spoonbill chicks.
"Those two islands, right there in the mouth of the Alafia River, have national significance in terms of the bird colonies they support," said Ann Paul of Audubon of Florida, the manager of the Florida Coastal Islands Sanctuaries, including the Alafia Banks. "It has some of the highest species diversity in North America."
One morning this month, Audubon staffers and volunteers zipped up their jackets for a trip to Sunken Island to check on roseate spoonbill nests and band the bigger chicks, then about 2 weeks old.
The outing was part of a roseate spoonbill study started last year. Audubon wants people to let them know when they spot a banded spoonbill so they can track the offspring and learn more about the birds, which have spatula-shaped bills and striking pink and red feathers. The roseate spoonbill is a Florida species of special concern that some consider an indicator of the overall health of estuaries, including Tampa Bay.
Hunters wiped out Tampa Bay's spoonbill population in the late 1800s. In the mid 1970s, eight spoonbill pairs returned to the Alafia Banks islands, possibly coming from Florida Bay in the Everglades in search of better nesting and feeding grounds. Now there are more than 300 pairs at Alafia Banks, about a third of the spoonbill pairs in the state.
Though the numbers here are up slightly, the community of spoonbills in Florida remains precariously small, Paul said. There are only about 800 to 900 pairs statewide. In human terms, it's a very small town.
The birds need specific conditions to breed successfully: protection from predators and disturbances, trees for nests and shade, water that gradually fluctuates in depth.
The water must be deep enough at one time of year, when fish spawn, but shallow enough another time of year, when spoonbills feed their young. Spoonbill chicks reach full size in six weeks. But without an easily caught supply of fish, spoonbills leave chicks to starve in their nests, as most did in Florida Bay last year.
As the boat passed Bird Island, the Audubon's Marianne Korosy worried about recent wind and rain.
"We haven't been able to get out and check the nests since the storm," said Korosy, an Audubon spoonbill technician and field biologist for the spoonbill study. "So I don't know what we'll find."
Wading into the bracing, cold water, the researchers at first saw few birds on Sunken Island's rocky shore.
"I'm going to check all the 58 nests (in the study), some of which are not ready for banding," Korosy said.
Then, as she headed into the Brazilian pepper trees, birds came flying up as if she had opened an umbrella of pink, red, white, gray and blue. Adult spoonbills, herons, ibis, pelicans and gulls called in alarm as they hovered or landed on higher branches. In the nests, chicks added high-pitched trills.
In a nesting area where every leaf and dry spot seemed to be speckled with bird droppings, Jerry Lorenz, the director of research at Audubon's Tavernier Science Center, moved in to set up a banding station. Lorenz, a marine and fisheries ecology biologist, has worked with spoonbills since 1989. He hopes to extend the study of spoonbills to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge near Titusville, where a third concentration of spoonbills live and nest.
As he carefully banded a chick so there are no sharp edges and no spaces left to hook monofilament line, the little spoonbill splattered his clothes.
"Welcome back to Alafia, Jerry," Lorenz said with a shrug. "You get used to it."
Rich Paul, a volunteer and the recently retired manager of the Florida Coastal Islands Sanctuaries, climbed a ladder and gently scooped two more chicks into a big white bucket to take to Lorenz.
"The third chick in that nest is not going to survive," he said. "It's a runt."
Then Korosy came up carrying a dead chick by the foot.
"This was the youngest of the three in the nest," she said, examining it. "It's beautiful. Look at the pin feathers."
She found more dead spoonbill chicks, including three crushed by a branch in the storm, but 22 chicks were banded with a red band on the left leg above the ankle joint and a silver band below the ankle joint of the right leg. The chicks banded were the largest ones, taken from 60 nests.
When the researchers go back out to continue the banding, the chicks banded that day will be unreachable, running away to high branches. Audubon members banded 168 Alafia chicks last year. They hope to band more this year.
Tampa Bay's nests produced an average of two surviving chicks, while most chicks starved in Florida Bay. Lorenz attributes that to Everglades water management practices that flood the bay when the chicks are in the nest. The other difference in the Tampa Bay area, he thinks, is a mosaic of wetlands that the birds can fall back on if their primary food source fails.
Two of last year's banded Alafia Banks chicks were recently spotted in a retention pond at the new Nielsen Media Research center in Oldsmar. The young birds are a lighter pink and have feathers on their heads instead of the bald, green heads of adults. Another of last year's banded Alafia chicks was seen in St. Augustine and one was spotted at the Alafia Banks.
Korosy even received a photo of the two Nielsen spoonbills with another young spoonbill, but she couldn't make out the numbers on the bands. That would take a long lens.
"Most people don't get close enough to see the numbers even with binoculars because the birds will take flight," Korosy said. "But it's good for us to get reports of red-banded birds because then I can go and track them down."
To help
If you see a banded roseate spoonbill, take down the location, including the county. Take a photo with the band showing, if possible. Note the color of the band, which leg it's on and the letters and numbers, read from the top down, if you can see them clearly. Then call Audubon at 623-6826 or e-mail apaul@audubon.org and leave contact information.
