White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean

'White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean'  16 x 20 oil on gelatin silver print original, $2100.

                                                                                                                                                         

Roseate Spoonbills

Ajaia ajaja

These wading birds use their spoon-shaped bills to filter the mangrove marsh waters for small shellfish and crustaceans.  The more shrimp they consume, the pinker their plumage becomes.  Although their feathers were sold in St. Augustine in the 1800's as souvenir fans, they were not hunted rapaciously as were the Egrets, but as they were found in the same places, they were killed on a whim.  By the early 1900's there were only a few dozen left north of the Mexican border, in Florida. With the help of the Audubon Society, returning birds from Mexico were protected, and the species has now rebounded.