File:Bird-lore (1914) (14568668580).jpg

Identifier: birdlore16nati (find matches)
Title: Bird-lore
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals
Subjects: Birds -- Periodicals Birds -- Conservation Periodicals
Publisher: New York, National Association of Audubon Societies
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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hus there are European, African, Asian, andAustralian Spoonbills, none pink like ours, but all with the singularly shapedbill which gives them their common name. There are only six members inthis small family; and how they should have become so widely separated isa question no one has answered satisfactorily. It is, however, known that,at one time in the earths history, what are now Arctic regions were verymuch warmer, and it is not improbable that at this period Spoonbills may havelived on the border of the Arctic Sea. When the climate changed and the iceof the Glacial Periods formed. Spoonbills, with other birds, were forcedsouthward, and hence, although we find them today at far distant parts ofthe globe, they at one time may have lived much nearer together. Of the six known species America received but one, the Roseate Spoonbill,whose peculiar scientific title of Ajaia ajaja is based on the name given itby certain South American Indians. When naturalists first knew this bird (214)
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ROSEATE SPOONBILLOrder—Herodionea Family—Plataleidae Genus—Ajaia Species—Ajaja The Roseate Spoonbill 215 it was found throughout tropical America north to our Gulf States fromTexas to Florida. In the United States, it is now confined largely to southFlorida, where, as I have already said, it was fast approaching extinctionwhen the Audubon Societies came to its rescue. Although I first went to Florida in 1887, it was not until 1908 that I sawSpoonbills there. Doubtless always more common on the coast than in theinterior, the few survivors were to be found only in the most remote part ofthe great mangrove swamps south of the Everglades. On the evening ofMarch 29, 1908, after traveling all day through mud and mangroves, wereached Cuthbert Rookery, near the extreme southern part of the peninsula,and found, to our intense satisfaction, that among the thousands of Heronsnesting on it there were about 40 Spoonbills. The beautiful peach-bloom-like pink of the Spoonbills was noticeable

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