The Science of Birds - Spoonbills

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

This episode—which is number 95—is all about spoonbills. There are six spoonbill species in the world, all of which belong to the genus Platalea. The unique beak of spoonbills sets them apart from pretty much all other birds. What is the advantage of having a bill shaped like that? We'll answer that question in this episode.~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website Support the show

Hello and welcome. This is the Science of Birds. I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. This is episode 95. It's all about the spoonbills. There are six spoonbill species, all of which belong to the genus Platalia, that's spelled P-L-A-T-A-L-E-A. Have you seen one of these birds, in the wild or maybe at the zoo?

They're pretty crazy-looking. I'll never forget the first time I saw Spoonbill. It was on the waterfront in the city of Cairns in Queensland, Australia. The species was a royal spoonbill, and I was super-jazzed to see one strutting around on a mudflat with that long, weird beak. Spoonbills in general are fairly large waterbirds. They're members of the avian family, Threscyornithity. Yes, that one is a bit of a mouthful, Threscyornitity. This is the family of the spoonbills and the ibises.

Today I'm going to focus on just the six spoonbill species. We'll talk about ibises in another episode. But someone might ask, why? Why don't I just cover the entire family and get it over with? Well, to that person, I would say, What's the rush, buddy? I mean, are you late for an important meeting or something? Do you have some desperate need for me to cover the entire family,

Threschi Ornithidi, right now? How about we all just chill out, take a deep breath, and learn about birds at a more relaxed pace? Enjoy the journey. But really, I just think spoonbills are distinct enough and interesting enough that they deserve their own podcast episode. And so here we are. As I was researching this episode, I was a little surprised to find that there's still a lot we don't know about spoonbills. I mean, these are super cool and charismatic birds, so you'd think scientists would have been all over them. Scientists should have them pretty well figured out by now. I mean, don't get me

wrong, there have been some in-depth studies of spoonbills for sure, and those researchers deserve credit for all their hard work. But the overall body of scientific literature on spoonbills seems a bit thin to me. In any case, there's still lots to say about these wonderful birds. So let's get into it. All right, so let's begin by looking at the appearance of spoonbills, their shape, size, color, and all that. The six species share the same overall body plan. The real differences among species are in size, bill color, leg color, and facial skin color. The general body shape of spoonbills is like that of most birds in the avian order pelicaniformis.

This group also includes ibises, herons, egress, and yes, pelicans. Spoonbills have fairly long, broad wings, and they have long necks and long legs. The smallest species is the black-faced spoonbill, with a length between 24 to 30 inches or 60 to 78 cent. The largest species is the yellow billed spoonbill, which ranges between 30 and 40 inches long, or 76 to 100 centimeters. As you might guess, things get more interesting when we look at the heads and beaks of these birds. Apparently, when some Spanish-speaking person in Europe saw their first spoonbill back in the day, that person looked at that crazy beak and decided it must be an adaptation the bird uses for, flipping pancakes. So they named it a spatula. That's right. In Spanish, spoonbill is just

a spatula, which of course translates as spatula. It's like, what if the English name for this bird was just spoon. That would be pretty awesome. In that case, the title for this podcast episode would be just spoons. Big spoons, little spoons, pink spoons, white spoons, even royal spoons. What spoons look like, what they sound like, where to find spoons, and how spoons make baby spoons? To add to the confusion here, there's also a genus of ducks named spatula. That genus includes ten species, such as the northern shoveler and cinnamon teal. Many ducks too have vaguely spoon or spatula-shaped bills. But anyway, the bill, the beak of the spoon bill is what we're supposed to be talking about, right?

So let me describe this thing. The spoon bill bill is fairly broad where it attaches to the bird's face. But then as we move outward, it gets more narrow in the middle. Then it flares out dramatically at the tip into a very flat, blunt, circular shape. The tip of the beak, what we would call the distal end, rolls gently downward a bit. It curves downward. The rounded off point at the tip is called the nail. Looking closer to study the bill's smaller details, we find that the edges of the upper and lower mandible

have rounded borders. In other words, they don't have sharp cutting edges the way that so many other bird beaks do. In terms of color, three of the six spoonbill species have beaks that are mostly black or dark gray. The African spoonbill has a pink bill with a layer of blue gray on the surface. Similarly, the roseate spoonbills bill can have a patina of blue-gray or greenish on a dark background. The yellow-billed spoon-bills bill, wow, that's a lot of bills. The yellow-billed spoon-bill has, surprisingly, a beak that is neon-purple. No, just kidding, it's definitely yellow. Most of the spoon-bill species also have some cool markings on their bills. They have barring that, to me, looks sort of like little tiger stripes, or like the small ripples on

beach sand after being washed by gentle waves. At the base of the upper part of the beak, these bars or stripes can have some three-dimensional structure as well. They emerge from the surface like bumps or ridges. One of the references I came across called these small structures horn-like excrescences. Now there's a word you don't see, day, excrescences. You know, when you look up a word on Google, it will often show you a little graph of how much that word has been mentioned over time, over the years? Well, the use of excrescence peaked in 1824. In those days, people apparently just couldn't shut up about excrescences. All they wanted to talk about in 1824 was trains, Beethoven's new banger, symphony number nine, and excrescence.

But this word has been declining in use ever since. It's at an all-time low right now. Well, I'm doing my part here to bring it back. Spread the word, kids. Tell your friends that an excrescence is, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a projection or outgrowth, especially when abnormal. Such outgrowths on the beaks of spoonbills, however, are normal. My understanding is that the older a spoonbill is, the more excrescences it has on its beak.

We'll come back a little later to talk about how the spoonbill uses its beak to catch prey. For the moment, let's consider the plumage and coloration of spoonbills. The dominant feather color among the six species is white. Several species like the Eurasian spoonbill have subtle patches of yellow on an otherwise white background. The roseate spoonbill, and that's spelled R-O-S-E-A-T-E, by the way, this species is the oddball. Its neck and upper back are white, yes, but most of the body is some shade of pink, rosy-colored. Parts of the wings and the upper tail coverts are even a deeper shade, more of a carmine color. And the tail is an orangish peach. From a distance you might see a flock of

rosyate spoonbills waiting through a wetland in Florida and think that they're flamingos. And like flamingos, rosyate spoonbills get their vibrant plumage color from the things they eat. Shades of pink and orange in spoonbill feathers come from molecules called carotenoid pigments. We've talked about them before. These pigments are found in some of the small aquatic crustaceans eaten by spoonbills. And if you'd like to learn more about this, about how feathers, get their colors, you can check out episode 56 of the podcast. So both flamingos and roseate spoonbills get pigments from their food and assimilate those pigments into their feathers. But these two

types of birds are not closely related. This pink plumage evolved independently in the two groups. That means it's an example of convergent evolution. Four of the six spoonbill species have some long white crest feathers that dangle off the backs of their heads in the breeding season. The royal spoonbill has the longest and most elegant crest feathers. A spoonbill can erect its crest feathers, creating a sort of shaggy mane or halo of feathers around its head. I think it looks really cool. All spoonbill species have some bare skin on the face. This is black in the Eurasian royal and, yes, the black-faced spoonbill.

The African spoonbill has pink facial skin, and the yellow-billed spoonbill has blueish or yellowish-white facial skin. The rosy it spoonbill takes this whole bare-skin thing to an extreme. As one of these birds matures, it loses all the feathers on its head. It goes bald. Depending on the bird's age and on individual variation, the bear skin is some combination of pale, bluish-green, apple green, yellow, and orange. Some individuals also have a thick band of black skin that wraps around the back of the head. So rosy at spoonbills go bald as they get older, sort of like humans.

But too bad we humans don't get to replace our missing hair with weird colorful skin like the spoonbills. Some of the other spoonbill species also have patches of colorful skin on their face. The Royal Spoonbill, for example, gets yellow eyebrow patches of skin during the breeding season, and these really pop out against the background of black facial skin. Eye color in spoonbills is red for most species, but yellow-billed and African spoonbills have pale irises. Okay, so that was all about the appearances of spoonbills. Let's move on to look at some of their general behaviors.

Spoonbills are gregarious birds. They like to hang out with other spoonbills. They often feed together, roost together, and fly around together in flocks. They roost in trees at night, close to water. And they also nest in colonies, and we'll get to that a little later. One of the more peculiar social behaviors of spoonbills is called sky-gazing. This happens when a group of spoonbills foraging in the water sees one or more of their spoonbill compadres flying overhead.

The birds in the water stop what they're doing, stretch out their necks, and point their bills into the air in the same direction toward the flying bird or birds. They sky gaze. They all assume the same posture and hold it for a few seconds. As far as I know, this sky-gazing behavior has only been seen in the road. Spoonbill, and it seems ornithologists don't know why spoonbills do this. Another interesting behavior in spoonbills is display sleeping. This is one of several ritualized

social displays. A scientific paper from 1983 described this in African spoonbills. Quoting the paper, display sleeping is a very common display in assemblages of courting and newly paired spoonbills, but it is so subtle that it is easily overlooked or dismissed as true sleeping. However, it differs from true sleeping in that the eyes often remain open and the bird is alert. Furthermore, display sleeping is most often performed on two legs, whereas in true sleeping the bird frequently stands on one leg, with the other drawn up under the body. It is a very contagious behavior pattern. Frequently all or most of the birds in a group engage in display sleeping,

and long periods may be spent in this activity. Periodically, all the birds awake and several minutes of frantic display activity passes through the group. Then the frantic activity ceases and, one by one, all the birds resume display sleeping. End quote. Pretty interesting, huh? And like sky-gazing, I can't find any scientific explanation for display sleeping. We still have much to learn about the mysterious ways of spoonbills. How about the vocal sounds of spoonbills?

What do these birds sound like? Well, with its spoon-shaped beak, you might expect a spoon-bill to make noises like this. The truth is, these birds are typically sunbathinged. silent as they go about their business most of the time. But in the breeding season, they make an assortment of simple grunting or trumpeting calls, as well as bill snapping sounds as they interact at the breeding colony. For example, here's the sound of an adult Eurasian spoonbill and its chicks in the nest. The adult is making some trumpeting calls, while the begging babies are the ones making the high-pitched trilling calls.

And here's another recording of Eurasian spoonbills, but this time in Mongolia. It's time. Ha! Ha! Ha! It's time to look at the diversity, geographic distribution, and habitats of spoonbills. As I mentioned, these birds are all in the family Thresciornithidae, which also includes the ibises, the closest relatives of spoonbills. Spoonbills' next closest relatives are birds in the

Heron and Eagret family, are deity. As you may recall, the genus that includes all the spoonbills is platalia. This word comes from platus in ancient Greek, meaning flat or broad. And of course, that refers to the beak. I've talked a little about each of the six species already. There's the Eurasian, Royal, African, black-faced, yellow-billed, and rosyat spoonbill. Ornithologists used to place the rosyot spoonbill in its own genus. With its pink plumage and multicolored bald head, this bird seemed different enough to be classified in its own genus.

But today, the scientific name of the rosiate spoonbill is, platalia ajaja. It's in the same genus as all the other spoonbill species. That second part of the scientific name, Ajaja, is spelled A-J-A-J-A, and it comes from the indigenous Tupi language of Brazil. The Tupi people called the spoonbill Ayay-ya or Ajaja. And I may not be pronouncing any of this correctly. I'm doing my best here. Speaking of Brazil, let's go ahead and look at how all six spoonbill species are distributed across the map of the world. Spoonbills of one species or another are found on every continent. Every continent, except for one.

And we all know which one, right? I should not have to utter its name. But yes, it's Antarctica. There are no spoonbills in Antarctica. On the rest of the continents, spoonbills are fairly widespread. But the places you probably won't find them are deep in the desert or in the chilly high latitudes as you move toward the poles. The new world has just one species, the roseate spoonbill. It's found from the southeastern

U.S., through the Caribbean, and across a large part of South America, as far down as central Argentina. In the U.S., rosiate spoonbills are most common in Florida and along the Gulf coasts of Texas and Louisiana. Europe, too, has just one species. species, the Eurasian spoonbill, Platalia, Lucorodia. This same species is found in Africa and Asia. Each of those continents has an additional species. There's the African spoonbill, Platalia Alba, and the black-faced spoonbill, Platolia Minor. The latter is found only in Eastern Asia. Two species live in Australasia, the Royal Spoonbill, Platalia Regia, and the Yellow-Billed spoonbill, platalia flavapes. So, unless you live in Antarctica, there's a decent chance you've got

at least one spoonbill species wading through the wetlands of your country. Most of these spoonbill species are not long-distance migrants. They live mostly year-round in their habitats. But some, like the Eurasian spoonbill, are partially migratory, or nomadic. Some populations of this and other species move around irregularly over the year in response to rainfall or other environmental conditions. The black-faced spoonbill, however, is a long-distance migrant. I'll talk more about that species and its movement a little later. In terms of habitat, spoonbills are water birds that usually prefer shallow, freshwater environments. Marshes, swamps, rivers, lakes, flooded fields, places like that.

But pretty much all spoonbills will also make use of sheltered coastal habitats. They like tidal mudflats, lagoons, salt pans, and mangrove habitats. The evolution of spoonbills is one of those areas of research that still has many unanswered questions. When and where did these birds first appear on Earth? Well, just looking at the genetic relationships among the modern species and at their distributions, it seems the genus Plotalia originated in the old world. But I'm not sure we can be any more specific than that. I couldn't find much information about spoonbill fossils, for example. However, there was one intriguing study from South Korea. Paleontologists discovered fossilized bird and dinosaur tracks from a wetland

that existed over 100 million years ago. Some of the tracks appeared to have been made by web-footed birds that moved their long bills through the water back and forth like spoonbills. The fossilized tracks in South Korea preserved the arc-shaped scrapes made in mud by the beaks of the prehistoric birds as they foraged in shallow water. The researchers claim that the fossilized scrape marks are identical to those made by modern-day spoonbills. Now, 100 million years ago seems to me to be way too early for the origin of spoonbills. Maybe there was another type of bird or even small dinosaur that shared similarities to modern spoonbills, and it left those tracks. Who knows? Perhaps a better estimate for the approximate origin date of spoonbills comes from a 2013 study that used DNA to construct an evolutionary tree for the entire family Threski Ornithy.

The analysis in that study points to roughly 10 million years ago as the time that spoonbushabee. Bills became their own thing. The 2013 study also confirmed that spoonbills represent a single lineage within the family Thresky Ornithity. Spoonbills make up their own sub-family called platylaeony. So what seems to have happened 10 million years ago was an ibis-like ancestor in the old world evolved to have a spoon-shaped bill as an adaptation for a new way of catching prey. If any humans had been around to name this ancestral bird, we might have called it the spoon-billed ibis. So this was the first espatula, the first bird with the ability to flip pancakes and omelets using nothing but its beak. And then, over the last 10 million years, that first ibis slash spoonbill slash espatula split into multiple species.

These birds eventually colonized various parts of the planet. The first spoonbill offshoot was a lineage that led to the roseate and yellow-billed spoonbills, which are each other's closest relatives. Likewise, the royal and black-faced spoonbills are sister species, and closely related to that latter pair is the Eurasian spoonbill. Five of the six spoonbill species are in the least concern category on the IUCN Red List. That means those species are doing reasonably well from a conservation perspective. But the black-faced spoonbill, Plataalia Minor, is an endangered species.

When I searched the scientific literature for papers on spoonbills, it turned out most of them were about the black-faced species. Remember that this is the smallest spoonbill species. It breeds in just a few small places, in Russia, North and South Korea, and China. I mentioned that it's a migratory species, right? Black-faced spoonbills head south for the winter. They hang out in Vietnam, southern China, the islands of Hainan and Taiwan, and sometimes Japan. Black-faced spoonbills have declined for multiple reasons.

In the past, pesticide pollution was probably what drove the population down to an estimated low of 288 individuals in 1988. Ongoing threats to this species include habitat loss because of industrial development in both the breeding and wintering ranges. Land reclamation in the Yellow Sea is a major problem because this is the location of both the breeding habitats and the migratory stopover sites. The birds need healthy coastal habitats where they can stop to rest and feed as they make their long migratory journeys. In case you're wondering, coastal land reclamation is the process of converting tidal flats, coastal wetlands, or shallow seas into dry land.

It's a massive engineering activity involving things like sea walls, draining seawater, and infilling with dirt and rocks. land reclamation in the Yellow Sea is a conservation nightmare because many other migratory birds besides spoonbills depend on the coastal habitats that are being destroyed. Interestingly, however, the total population of black-faced spoonbills has been increasing. The best estimate I could find for the current population is 2,250 mature individuals.

That's almost 10 times as many as in the late 1980s. Apparently, the increasing number of black-faced spoonbills is the result of successful conservation efforts. Now, the species is still very much endangered, but we should celebrate every little win when it comes to conservation. What exactly do spoonbills use those weird bills for anyway? How does that special shape help with gathering food. Well, first let's talk about the diet. Spoonbills are mostly carnivorous. Diet varies among species, but it's usually some combination of small fish, amphibians, aquatic insects, crustaceans like shrimp and crayfish, worms, and mollusks. Spoonbills will

occasionally eat plant material, too. These birds will often feed for most of the day, catching and eating thousands of small animals every day. The two species in Australia, the Yellow Bill and Royal Spoon Bills, sometimes forage in the same inland waterways. You might predict that the two species are so similar that they'll have to compete fiercely for the same prey. But researchers have documented that Yellow Bill and Royal Spoon Bills can coexist happily because they feed on different things

in slightly different ways. The Yellow Bill's spoonbill eats more, insects and crustaceans. It's especially fond of aquatic insects called back swimmers. It has a longer beak and a more relaxed method of foraging. The Royal Spoonbill, on the other hand, focuses most of its efforts on catching small fish. To better understand the diet of the black-faced spoonbill, researchers in a 2021 study used everybody's favorite source of DNA, poop, otherwise known as feces, guano, caca, and so on. Gross, perhaps, but useful. These researchers collected and analyzed DNA from 110 spoon-bill fecal samples from the area around Hong Kong. The technique they

used is called DNA barcoding. With DNA barcoding, scientists can identify organisms by analyzing a short, unique section of their DNA. This short DNA sequence acts sort of like the barcode on a bag of potato chips or a 12-pack of root beer at the grocery store. A sample of poo-poo from a black-faced spoonbill contains bits and pieces of DNA from all the things that the bird recently ate. Scientists in the lab can sequence those DNA samples and use computer programs to match them to the barcodes of known animal and plant species. So, in this 2021 study, the researchers discovered that black,

Black-faced spoonbills around Hong Kong are eating at least 26 different fish species. And they discovered dietary differences between groups of spoonbills and among individuals. When a spoonbill goes a foraging, it wades through shallow water, most often at dawn and dusk. These birds specialize in feeding in turbid water, water that's too muddy or cloudy to see through. so a spoonbill doesn't really use its sense of sight to hunt. The bird stands, or more often walks forward, with its bill mostly submerged and swinging left and right. The tip of the bill makes a wide arc through the water.

The bill is held open a few inches, so that water, and whatever small things are swimming in it, will pass between the upper and lower mandibles. The flatness and rounded edges of the bill minimize drag and turbulence as the bird swings it back and forth in the water. The more smoothly and quietly a spoonbill can move its bill, the less likely it is to scare off any potential prey. When a shrimp, fish, tadpole, back swimmer, or other small critter touches the inside of the spoonbill's beak, snap! The upper and lower mandibles reflexively slam shut. The spoonbill has scored a snack.

So it is with the sense of touch that these birds hunt. Looking at the skull of a spoonbill, you can see all these little pits in the surface around the sides and inside surfaces of the bill. Researchers hypothesize that in the living bird, these pits are the locations of special touch receptors. There are specialized highly sensitive nerve endings that allow a spoonbill to feel its prey.

Also lining the inner surfaces of the upper and lower beak are low, narrow ridges running in parallel by the dozen. It's likely these little ridges provide extra surface area and grip for holding on to wiggling, slippery prey like fish. You know, back in the podcast episode I did on beaks, episode 86, I said that ducks and spoonbills have spatula-shaped beaks for sifting small plants and invertebrates from water. That's true for many ducks, but spoonbills aren't really sifting. Their beaks are more like a pair of barbecue tongs, tongs that snap shut like a mousetrap when those touch receptors get triggered. So maybe tongbill would be a better name than spoonbill. Tong bill. Tong bill, it's not as easy to say,

is it? Oh well. When you watch a tong bill, a spoon bill with its face down in the water, its foraging behavior might seem sort of random and chaotic. But researchers studying the black-faced spoonbill have figured out that these birds forage quite efficiently. They waste as little time and energy as possible. For example, a spoonbill will often give up searching an area after a time that's just a wee bit longer than the average time it takes for a successful foraging bout.

As a hypothetical example, if it normally takes the spoonbill three minutes to catch something, it will often give up after three minutes and 30 seconds if it hasn't caught anything. It doesn't want to waste its time or energy, so it moves to another area and tries again there. Spoonbills are socially monogamous when it comes to breeding. They pair up, one female and one male, to raise a family. Mated pairs of rosy-at spoonbills seem to stick together for just one breeding season. It's not clear to me whether other spoonbill species stay together for more than one year or not. It seems more research is needed. There's evidence, at least in the Eurasian spoonbill,

of birds mating with individuals other than their bonded partner. These would be cases of what ornithologists call extra pair matings or copulations. Spoonbill pair formation in the early breeding season involves some ritualized courtship displays. Females may make display flights for spectating males, as well as bowing displays. Interestingly, a male can often be aggressive and attack an approaching female at first. But then he's like, nah, I was just kidding. Did I scare you, though? You should have seen the look on your face.

I was all like, rah! And you were all like, ah! hilarious. So, anyway, you want to hook up, make some baby spoonbills and whatnot? Once a pair forms, the two birds will make other displays, that reinforce their bond. Examples include greeting displays, stick shaking, and alopreneing. The latter, alopreneing, is where the birds groom each other.

Male spoonbills are the ones that establish a nest site. This is typically within a breeding colony. So there are other spoonbills around, potential competitors for the best nest sites. As a consequence, males are pretty aggressive to any birds that get too close to their territories. An angry male makes a threat posture where he holds his body parallel to the ground. He lowers his head with his neck stretched out, and he may also raise his wings. But it's hard to imagine being intimidated by that beak, though. I mean, when did you ever hear someone yell,

Look out! He's got a spoon! If the interloping bird isn't intimidated, if it doesn't get the message, the defending male may lunge at it and a fight might break out. At least in rosy at spoonbills, so-called sham battles are common. This is where the two birds smack at each other furiously with their wings. It looks dramatic, but nobody gets hurt. It's kind of like two drunk guys in a bar trying to resolve their differences with a pillow fight. Spoonbills build their nests in trees, usually near or overhanging water.

The nests may be clustered together in one area in the breeding colony. The nest itself is a large platform. It has a foundation of sticks topped by soft grasses and leaves. The male supplies the building materials while the female does the actual construction. The female lays two to five eggs. Incubation is carried out by both mom and dad, and it takes about two to three weeks. The eggs hatch asynchronously. In other words, they hatch at different times.

Hatchling spoonbills are semi-altry. They can't really move on their own, but they have some sparse down feathers and their eyes are open. Interestingly, they are not born with spoon-shaped beaks. Instead, hatchlings have relatively short, straight bills that are sort of fleshy. They look a lot like the bills of hatchling ibises, and that's one sign of the close relationship between these two types of birds. In the rosy at spoonbill, the beak begins to flatten nine days after hatching. At about two weeks, it looks more spoon-like. When the youngster is a little over a month old, its beak is full-sized and has achieved

maximum spoonatude. The chicks are cared for by both parents. Within a few weeks, the young spoonbills are ready to leave the nest. It might take them five to seven weeks before they can fly, and they still need to be fed by their parents for a while after leaving the nest. Family groups may stick together for some time after the young birds fledge, although it seems there isn't much data on this. Families probably break up as birds disperse from the breeding colony at the end of the season.

The oldest wild roseate spoonbill was at least 15 years old, and a captive bird of that same species lived for 29 years. But it's probably more typical for these birds to live about. seven years in the wild. Roziate spoonbills, at least, can look forward to going bald as they get older, and pretty much all spoonbills will develop a faceful of gnarly excrescences as they age gracefully. And that, my friends, is what I have to say about spoonbills, at least for today. I hope you learn some things and have a deeper understanding of these weird and interesting birds,

whatever you call them, as spatulas, spoons, tongbills, or just spoonbills. Thanks for listening today, whether this was your first episode of the science of birds or your 95th, I really hope you enjoyed it. We don't have any spoonbills here in Oregon, where I live, but I'm looking forward to the next time I see one of these birds, wherever that might be. Of the six species, I have yet to see. the yellow build, or the black-faced spoonbill. But maybe someday. If you enjoy the Science of Birds podcast,

you can thank the kind people who support this show via Patreon. The members of my Patreon community help me keep the avian engine running over here. So a big thanks to them. The newest members of my community are Fred Haunty, P. Ackerson, J.J.L., Yana A., Candy Bolin, Shannon, Lyle, Catherine Hallam and Carly Floberg.

Welcome to all of you and thank you so, so much for the support. It's an enormous help to me. If you are thinking about becoming a supporter, you can check out my Patreon page over at patreon.com slash science of birds. And if you have something you'd like to share with me, please go ahead and shoot me an email. Maybe you have a comment about the podcast or you have a semi-archaic word

you'd like me to revive here on the podcast, like codswallop or gadzooks, something like that. In any case, my address is Ivan at Scienceofbirds.com. This is episode 95. You can check out the show notes for the episode, along with some curated photos of spoonbills, on the Science of Birds website, Scienceofbirds.com. I'm Ivan Philipson. Thanks again for being here, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Cheers.

Thank you.