The Bird Life of Sandy Key

Explore the Florida Everglades and their exciting wildlife. This video teaches you about the birds of Sandy Key, Florida.

The Bird Life of Sandy Key It is late January on Sandy Key, an island not far from the mainland. Hidden in the mangroves is a small colony of spoonbills. Chicks just a week old wait for a parent to arrive with food. Wading birds don’t carry food with their feet or beaks, they regurgitate it. If we didn’t know better we might wonder who’s doing the eating here. Ah oh! They’re bickering; people aren’t the only ones who do. These birds are safer nesting together but they’re such a thing as staying a neighborly distance. Not far away another nest has three dangly chicks at least a week older. Hey if you run out of feathers to preen you can always nibble the guy next to you. These birds will stay pale pink for at least a year no matter how many shrimp they eat. Then for the next two years their color will slowly deepen to a beautiful rosy pink. Happy feeding scenes can turn into trouble when a fallen chick tries to get into the wrong nest. You see strangers are not allowed in here, not even a neighbor’s defenseless baby. Another chick tumbles into the nest but the parent immediately recognizes that as one of its own. And what will become of the little intruder? It will be jabbed and pestered until it is driven out. A few months after spoonbills have nested in Florida Bay, parents gathered together in rookeries throughout the Everglades. Once very abundant, these colonies of tri color herons, great egrets and snowy egrets have been shrinking due to the water shortage in the Everglades. But even so, there are busy places and in April we find nest in all stages of development. By late April, a snowy egret is using food to entice her young to fly. At first the meals are given for free but after that, the mother hovers over her young and in this way let’s them know that they will have to fly to her if they want more food. From the Palmettos, the chicks watch their mother fly to a nearby tree, they are excited. One chick in particular fights that inner battle, hunger versus the fear of jumping up the Palmettos. At last hunger wins, but wait a minute, now I'm stuck over here. On the pond a mother moorhen uses food to lure her chicks into unfamiliar waters. Her babies are still much too small to fly but already they are good swimmers even if they’re not quite as fast as mom.