Roseate Spoonbills (Platalea ajaja) were feeding in a roadside lagoon near San Blas on the Pacific Coast of Mexico in early February. Having seen all six species of spoonbill on our travels around the world these were by far the most active we had come across. The frantic sweeping of the bill left and right, the sudden snap shut and the lift to swallow whatever they have caught is an amazing spectacle. If you look closely at my video you will see one catches and swallows a small fish.
There have been all sorts of suggestions as to how spoonbills detect the prey passing between the upper and lower ‘spoons’ and thus rigger the bill to snap closed. There is a good discussion of the topic by Bruce Taggart HERE.
We passed this lagoon (with a restaurant by the edge) several times. Each time it had large numbers of Great (Great White) (Ardea alba) and Snowy Egrets (Egretta thula), as well as the spoonbills.
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