Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja), Volume 4, Plate 321

Painted 1831-32 in Florida. Havell, following a sketch by George Lehman, added the background.

Audubon shows the spoonbill as he is about to wade into the water. Notice how even though the bird’s bill hasn’t actually touched the water, little circles are beginning to from around the likely area of impact. His brush registers the smallest detail of the long-legged colors and textures, including the characteristic featherless head. The bare landscape receding into the distance—an infinitely repeated, monotonous series of little islands topped by small clusters of trees—emphasizes how unique this bird is. As in many of the other plates included in Birds of America, Audubon dares us to imagine a world in which birds are the only legitimate residents.

From John James Audubon’s Ornithological Biography

Few birds are better aware of the hours at which the waters are high or low, and when it is near ebb you see them wending their way to the shore. Whenever a feeding place seems to be productive, the Spoonbills are wont to return to it until they have been much disturbed, and persons aware of this fact may waylay them with success, as at such times one may shoot them while passing over head. To procure their food, the Spoonbills first generally alight near the water, into which they then wade up to the tibia, and immerse their bills in the water or soft mud, sometimes with the head and even the whole neck beneath the surface. They frequently withdraw these parts however, and look around to ascertain if danger is near. They move their partially opened mandibles laterally to and fro with a considerable degree of elegance, munching the fry, insects, or small shell-fish, which they secure, before swallowing them. When there are many together, one usually acts as sentinel, unless a Heron should be near; and in either case you may despair of approaching them. I have never seen one of these birds feeding in fresh water, although I have been told that this is sometimes the case. To all those keys in the Floridas in which ponds have been dug for the making of salt, they usually repair in the evening for the purpose of feeding; but the shallow inlets in the great salt marshes of our southern coasts are their favourite places of resort.