A fitting name

Some birds are named for their colors, like the cardinal and the bluebird. Some are named for how someone thought their call sounded, like the towhee and chickadee. Some birds are named for where they were first spotted, like the Cape May and magnolia warblers. And then there’s this bird.

If you had been the first to see this bird, you might have called it a stilt, too. This is the black-necked stilt, one of five species of stilts, and a common one all along the Gulf Coast. Only flamingos have longer legs in proportion to the rest of their bodies.

They wade in shallow waters to capture their meals of aquatic invertebrates and fish. Favorites on their menu include crawfish, brine flies, brine shrimp, beetles, water boatmen, and tadpoles. They peck, snatch, and plunge their heads into the water in pursuit of their food, and will herd fish into shallow waters to trap them there.

Black-necked Stilts nest on the ground. They tend to build on surfaces above water, such as small islands, clumps of vegetation, or even, occasionally, floating mats of algae. And there they lay one clutch each spring of up to five eggs.

I took this picture last winter in Florida’s Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. The annual birding festival there is next week, January 23-28. It’s a wonderful way to see all of Florida’s prettiest wading birds.