Why Are Spoonbills Pink - T-Tees - Your Answers Await, Life's Questions Unraveled

The Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) is one of the most striking birds in Florida wetlands. Being relatively large avians, standing nearly three feet tall and with a four-foot wingspan, these brightly colored birds are not difficult to spot.

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Most of this ease is due to their brilliant pink plumage. The only other bird in North America that rivals this blushing bird is the American Flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber), which is exceedingly rare and only occasionally spotted in the deepest corners of the Everglades. However, these birds share a remarkable similarity in how they get their pink color from their food.

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Roseate Spoonbills gain their pink plumage through the crustaceans and invertebrates they consume. This prey contains high concentrations of carotenoids, leading to these unusual birds’ astonishing aspect.

The process of how these tiny animals turn into the genesis of radiant pink feathers is rather fascinating. So, let’s talk about it!

How Do Shrimp Create Pink Feathers?

Pigmentary coloration is the process in which color is formed through the absorption and reflection of specific light waves. The final color that reaches our eyes is the wavelength of light that is not absorbed by that particular surface, also called subtractive coloration.

For example, if all the light is reflected off a surface, you would receive the color white. However, if a surface absorbs all the light, you would get the color black.

I know that might sound like a lot, but you deal with pigmentary and subtractive coloration daily.

Color printers function entirely on subtractive coloration, utilizing four colors of ink: black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. To correctly print an image, the printer continuously calculates how much of each color to use. Once the image is printed onto paper, each of these four colors will control which wavelengths of light are absorbed and which are reflected, resulting in the final colored image we see.

Now that we’ve got a basic understanding of some color theory, let’s get back to the birds.

Roseate Spoonbills primarily prey on tiny crustaceans and other invertebrates in the shallow marshlands they call home. This otherwise untapped food source was enough to make spoonbills what we know them to be today.

Over millions of years, spoonbills diverged from ibises in their appearance and feeding behaviors. Ibis are superb probing birds, sticking their sickle-shaped bills deep into the soil for burrowing invertebrates. However, this fine-pointed bill was impractical for infinitesimal items in murky water. So, over countless generations of natural selection, a broad, nerve-rich, spoon-shaped bill was derived to help these birds find their prey easier.

The spoonbill’s “hunting” style also reflects this beak’s strengths. Slowly wading through the water, these birds will move their head side to side with the bill submerged and slightly agape. Once the bird senses something touching the edge or inside the bill, it greedily snaps it up.

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Think of someone using a metal detector at the beach. That person will amble while waving the device back and forth above the sand in slow, broad sweeps. Once the metal detector senses an object of interest, it will alert the user, and that item can be dug up.

The nerve endings and clusters at the bulbous end of the spoonbill’s bill act like the metal detector’s sensors. But, instead of pocket change and wedding rings, the spoonbill is looking for its lunch.

With all this background in mind, how are these crustaceans the key to their pink coloration? And, wouldn’t such a minuscule meal be a waste of time anyways?

Crustaceans are packed with carotenoids, fat-soluble pigments that makeup reds, oranges, and yellows. Invertebrates compile these pigments by eating aquatic vegetation, which uses beta-carotenoids to conduct photosynthesis. Then, as spoonbills snap up these crustaceans, they ingest their stockpiled carotenoids.

As the birds digest their prey, these pigments are transferred into fat stores under the skin. These reserves feed into the feathers, primarily along the bird’s arms and rump. Different concentrations of carotenoids and types of pigments, specifically canthaxanthin and astaxanthin, will result in various shades of pink, red, orange, and yellow throughout the spoonbill’s plumage.

And, as far as these minuscule meals being a waste of time, hunting for tiny crustaceans is much more efficient than you’d think.

Imagine the amount of energy a hawk has to burn to chase down a rabbit through a field. Compare this to a spoonbill slowly walking through a mangrove swamp, lazily swaying its head and seizing prey as it comes.

Since the spoonbill’s quarry is so tiny, the amount of effort to capture it must be minimal, and it very much is. This manner of feeding is exceptionally cost-effective, where the most energy is spent walking and swallowing the food itself.

Going back to the beginning of this section, the red-orange wavelength of light (580-650 nm) mixes with a dark blue-violet wavelength (380-495 nm) and is reflected off the feathers to produce what we call pink. This is a classic view of subtractive coloration, where all but the desired colors are absorbed by the surface.

I think it is also vital to understand how the color makes its way from the feather to our eye in the way we perceive it. Different birds use different coloration strategies to work within their lifestyles, and spoonbills have chosen one of my personal favorites. The pink that we are so fond of in Roseate Spoonbills and American Flamingos simply wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for these seemingly insignificant crustaceans.

I actually talk a lot about pigmentary coloration and carotenoids in my article Why Are Flamingos Pink – How a Bird’s Diet Affects its Feathers. I’ve also discussed structural coloration in Why Are Flamingos Blue – When That’s Impossible. If you’d like to check out either of those, please click on the blue text, and you’ll be brought directly to them.

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But, now that we know HOW are Roseate Spoonbills are pink, let’s find out the reasons WHY are Roseate Spoonbills are pink.

So, Why Are Roseate Spoonbills Pink?

Juvenile Roseate Spoonbills are much more plain compared to their adult counterparts. These young birds can easily be mistaken for a White Ibis at first glance by displaying a fully white-feathered head, neck, breast, shoulders, dull orange-brown eyes, and very pale pink wing and body feathers.

Adult spoonbills, in contrast, will sport a bare pale-green head bordered with black around the ears, blood-red eyes, white neck and breast feathers, bright wings, body and rump, and radiant magenta wing and tail coverts. The adult’s beak is also ordained with dark ridges and bumps rather than the smooth surface of the juvenile’s bill.

Young spoonbills will graduate to their full adult plumage a few months before their third birthday, roughly 33 months old. This changing of garb coincides perfectly with the upcoming spring migration and nesting season soon after.

The importance of these plumages is to give other spoonbills a clear indicator of when a bird is old enough to breed. The flamboyant coloration these birds have been dealt with also comes with another factor, honest signaling.

An honest signal is one which the animal cannot hide or falsify. An excellent example of an honest signal is the quality and state of their plumage and aspect, specifically, when their aspect is based on a color they cannot produce. Colors stemming from carotenoids aren’t something birds can synthesize, so they must come from the food they eat. In some species, this only makes up a small part of their display, whereas it is nearly the entire color spectrum of other species.