Roseate spoonbill chicks, which need just the right conditions to survive, are studied at an area sanctuary.
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 went 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 see a banded spoonbill so they can track the offspring and learn more about the birds, which have spatula-shaped bills and 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.
Hunters wiped out Tampa Bay's spoonbill 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.
Although the numbers in the area are up slightly, the spoonbill community in Florida remains precariously small, Paul said. Only about 800 to 900 pairs exist statewide.
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 spoonbill adults feed their young. Spoonbill chicks reach full size in six weeks. But without an easily caught supply of fish, spoonbill adults leave chicks to starve in their nests, as most did in Florida Bay last year.
As the boat passed Bird Island, 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."
In a nesting area, Jerry Lorenz, the director of research at Audubon's Tavernier Science Center, set up a banding station. Lorenz, a marine and fisheries ecology biologist, has worked with spoonbills since 1989. He hopes to extend the study to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge near Titusville, where a third concentration of spoonbills live and nest.
As he carefully banded a chick, the little spoonbill splattered his clothes.
Rich Paul, a volunteer and the recently retired manager of the Florida Coastal Islands Sanctuaries, climbed a ladder and gently gathered two more chicks.
Then Korosy came up carrying a dead chick.
"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 chicks, but 22 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 return 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, but 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.
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 813 623-6826 or e-mail apaul@audubon.org and leave contact information.
