WHAT’S YOUR “SPARK” BIRD??
By Stevie Morris
Last month we began a series of articles on which birds which “sparked” individuals to become birders. Why are you interested in birds? This question was posed to the monthly “Birds & Brew” gang and below is one of their answers.
Sam Merrill, BHAS Chair of Conservation and a long-time birder remembers back to the moment he became fascinated by birds:
“Remembering way back when I was a kid growing up in Louisiana, my parents and I were visiting the Louisiana State University campus, when we stopped by a pond where some huge birds, large, all black with long thin necks, were floating very low on the water. Clearly, they were not ducks or swans and nothing like anything we had ever seen before.
After returning home, I looked them up in a book, finding something called a “water turkey” or “snake bird”, which looked something like what we had seen, but I thought it was supposed to live somewhere in South America.
Baffled, it was not until we visited the Natural History Museum in New Orleans, and there, exhibited in a diorama was our bird—an ANHINGA—ever since a special bird to me.”
Listen to its call here: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/92466861
There are many fascinating YouTube videos you can watch, as well (such as this one of an Anhinga, the Snakebird, “Having dinner”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj3NV3B-nIA&ab_channel=PinellasAdventures )
FUN FACTS: Its name comes from a Brazilian Indian Tribe meaning ‘devil bird’ or ‘evil’ spirit of the woods. It does not have waterproof feathers but can stay underwater for lengthy periods. A very large bird, its wingspan is over 42”.
We want to know what YOUR own spark bird is! Share your own “SPARK” bird with us! Email us at Stephaniemrrs2@nullgmail.com . You may well inspire others!!
Photo credit: Anhinga swimming at Gemini Springs, by Andrea Westmoreland, via Wikimedia Commons under the CC-by-SA 2.0 license, and American Anhinga with fish at the Wakodahatchee Wetlands, by Judy Gallagher, via Wikimedia Commons under the CC-by-2.0 license.
