Anhinga

Last post from Florida - promise. But with weather here in Ohio cold, rainy/sleety, and dipping down in to the low 30's, it's time to regurgitate a few more photos from the Deep South, these of a most interesting animal.

A familiar silhouette in the Florida swamps - a long-tailed, long-necked, long-billed Anhinga.

Sleek and ebony, a male Anhinga fans his wings dry after a fishing trip. Like the closely related cormorants, Anhingas lack waterproofing oils and thus are not very bouyant. This necessitates lengthy timeouts to dry the plumage, but decreased bouyancy is an asset if you wish to stay under water, pursuing piscine prey.

A female Anhinga, brown about the head and neck. It looks like she has donned a wool pullover.

Say, if you struggle with learning scientific names, and have always been dazzled by those propellerheaded techno-geeks that can spout them at the drop of a hat, this bird can be your entree to that rarified crowd. Anhinga. Scientific name: Anhinga anhinga.

Or you could dispense with Anhinga altogether. This bird has several other cool names. Darter. Snakebird. And a personal fave, the Water-turkey.

But Anhinga is a pretty cool name, with interesting roots. It hails from tribal Brazilian lingo and roughly means "devil bird". They'd know the bird well down there, too - like so many of Florida's southern specialty birds, the Anhinga reaches its northern limits in the southernmost U.S. but ranges widely throughout South America.

A male Anhinga belches out what, quite frankly, is a pretty unmelodic tune. Basically, they make surprisingly loud nasal croaks - not a sound you'll probably hear on those soothing sounds of nature CD's.

At one spot, I was able to watch an Anhinga swimming underwater. As ungainly as they may look when flopped onto a branch, wings outstretched like an oafish Dracula spreading his cape, they transform when in the water. The photo above shows how Anhingas acquired the "snakebird" nickname. With only head and neck protruding, and the shadow of that long skinny body following behind, they do resemble a serpent slicing through the water.

The business end of an Anhinga; not something you want to encounter if you are a fish. Anhingas are astonishingly fast and graceful when submerged, and more than capable of overtaking prey and spearing them in the blink of an eye with that daggerlike bill. We saw one that had impaled a fair-sized bluegill so firmly that the bird was forced to beat and swipe the fish against a stout branch in an attempt to dislodge it. After ten minutes or so of watching that struggle, I left and the Anhinga was still flailing away.

Anhingas are excellent flyers, and can soar high aloft every bit as effortlessly as eagles. Sometimes they'll catch thermals and swirl skyward until they're just tiny specks. Every now and again, an especially exploratory Anhinga will venture way to the north of where they ought to be. One was seen in Ohio way back in 1885, along the Ohio River near Marietta. That stood as a remarkable record for over a century, until Judy Semroc photographed another Anhinga near Akron in 2006. And I don't think we've seen the last of these odd water-turkeys.