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Roseate spoonbills in flight        Images © Mark A. Chappell

Roseate spoonbills are uniquly bizarre birds (in my opinion), with bright pink and orange colors coupled with strikingly strange bare heads and the iconic spoon-shaped bill.   Spoonbills feed by straining small organisms out of shallow water, as some of these birds are doing.   I took nearly all of these pictures at the famous Ding Darling refuge on Sannibel Island, near Fort Meyers, Florida, as the bird arrived to roost late in the afternoon.   One of the pale juvenile birds (lacking dark head markings and red 'forearm' color patches) was in Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas

  • Canon 1D3, 500 mm IS lens or 800 mm IS lens, some with 1.4X converter (2008)