Sunday, February 22, 2009

Camera Critters-Black Skimmer



Awhile back, I found this great meme called Camera Critters. I love the pictures and decided that with my wealth of critter pictures down here in SW Florida, I would join in and I have for several weeks now. I would like to have you hop on over to Camera Critters. There you can either sign up for your own post for Camera Critters or see lots and lots of other great critter pics. So, now that you've done that--here is my critter for the day.

Black Skimmers are very interesting birds. Their red and black beak is knifelike thin. The lower part is much longer than the upper part. The reason being is that they "skim" along the water with the bottom part of the beak in the water hoping to catch small fish. An interesting fact is that when they are born, the upper and lower parts of the beak are equal lengths. By the time they are fledging at 4 weeks, the lower part is already at least 1 cm longer.

I took this picture on the beach on Sanibel. They really are a beautiful bird and very interesting.

6 comments:

Jane Hards Photography said...

New one to me and I have lots of shore birds here. Excellent images.

Adrienne Zwart said...

I've never seen one of these before. After my last visit to Florida, I have decided I need to come back down and skip the parks to just go birding for a couple days. (Don't know how the kids would feel about that, though.) Great photo!

Anonymous said...

Wow, I don't remember seeing those here either. I'll watch for them now. :-)

Lilli & Nevada said...

never seen anything like this before, he is actually very beautiful

Dianne said...

those beaks are intimidating - and beautiful

Unknown said...

I've never seen one here either.They say there are tons of them on Cedar Key,but we never saw them there,either.They must be hiding from us.