Limpkin's rare journey from Florida to Ohio causes stir among bird watchers

A limpkin with freshly caught snail at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge/Jim McCormac

Limpkin's rare journey from Florida to Ohio causes stir among bird watchers

Columbus Dispatch

December 29, 2019

NATURE

Jim McCormac

An amazing report crackled through the birding grapevine on July 6.

A limpkin was found at a small suburban pond in Orville in Wayne County. Birders fortunate enough to reach the site in time found it. Come dusk, the wayward oddity, which looks like a cross between a heron and a rail, flew into a nearby tree to roost for the night.

Many birders were on-site at the crack of dawn the following morning, myself among them. Alas, the limpkin had flown the coop. We searched likely habitats nearby, but no one could find the bird.

Why the excitement? In the U.S., the limpkin is known as a Florida specialty, rarely seen away from the Sunshine State. That is the northern limit of its breeding range. Limpkins occur south through the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America, and into South America.

Limpkins are largely nonmigratory, and records north of Florida are few. Most vagrants turn up in southeastern states near Florida: Georgia, the Carolinas, with a handful of Maryland and Virginia records. Astonishing is a trio of old reports from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

The same day the Orville limpkin was discovered, an after-the fact report came in via new birder Nannette Patrick. She found and photographed a limpkin near Mentor, east of Cleveland, on July 3. Then, in mid-October, longtime birder John Pogacnik found yet another limpkin in the same region.

In between the Mentor records, a limpkin appeared at Magee Marsh Wildlife Area east of Toledo. That bird stayed through fall and was widely seen. By October, the Magee limpkin was getting harder to find, until it appeared at the adjacent Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge on Nov. 16.

I visited the Ottawa limpkin on Nov. 18. It was a snap to find. Seemingly unafraid, it went about its business of capturing snails in a small patch of swamp woods. In between hunting escargot, it would rest and preen in close proximity to a small knot of fawning birders.

If all of these records pertain to different individuals, it would constitute a mini-invasion of four birds, in a state where none had ever been recorded. Furthermore, they represent the farthest north the species has been seen in the U.S. Another limpkin turned up in southeastern Illinois — the only other Midwestern record.

Limpkins feed almost exclusively on snails, and to a lesser extent small mussels, and in Florida and points south they favor large apple snails. The Ottawa bird also fed on aquatic snails, but a smaller species, perhaps in the genus Stagnicola. It was adept at finding them, and in a half-hour period, I watched it capture and eat more than a dozen.

What would prompt such an unprecedented northward movement of a largely sedentary southern bird? Perhaps the best explanation is linked to a tremendous limpkin population expansion in Florida in recent years.

The limpkin population was perhaps constrained by its preferred food, the native Florida apple snail. In the past decade, populations of at least four species of nonnative apple snails have flourished. Opportunistic limpkins took a shine to this new food source, and their numbers have skyrocketed.

A limpkin boom means more birds to wander. These “scouts” that turn up in far-flung regions might perish, as they presumably do not have migratory roadmaps hardwired into their DNA. But over time, it is likely that new populations will become established north of the current home range.

The only certainty with bird populations is change.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.

Florida Snails

If you are amongst the myriad birders that migrate south to Florida to gawk over some of the Sunshine State's specialty birds, you must thank snails. But all is not well in the world of these univalved gastropods, as we shall see.

Windrows of apple snail shells litter the edge of a Florida marsh. I believe that all of these shells are of the introduced Island Apple Snail, Pomacea insularum. This invader, native to South America, has colonized much of peninsular Florida and can be locally abundant.

High on any birder's Florida wish list is the spectacular and aptly named Snail Kite, Rostrhamus sociabilis. This female has an apple snail in her mandibles. Snail Kites have an incredibly long tip to the upper mandible of the bill, and their slender bill has evolved to harvest snails from their hard shells. But not just any snail - Florida Apple Snails, Pomacea paludosa. Unfortunately for the kite - and the snail - Florida's only native apple snail is under siege from at least three threats: outright destruction of wetland habitats; alteration of water regimes in existing wetlands; and the invasion of four other non-native species of apple snails.

These invading snails displace the native apple snail, and it appears that young kites have a much tougher time extracting the meat from the larger and bulkier introduced species.

If the kites, which feed almost exclusively on apple snails, can't make the jump to the non-native snails, their prospects in Florida do not appear good.

Another wonderful Florida bird for U.S. birders is the Limpkin. What it lacks in plumage pizazz is more than made up for with earsplittingly loud piercing cries. Interestingly, this bird's range nearly mirrrors that of the Snail Kite, with Florida being the northernmost outpost. Like the kite, Limpkins are major snail consumers. As might be geussed from the size of their giant crowbar of a bill, Limpkins apparently can readily handle the enormous invader apple snails and seem to be thriving. I must have seen or heard a few hundred Limpkins in my short five days in Florida, including one favored spot where at least 65 were on display at once.

At a secluded hardwood hammock deep in the Everglades, I was delighted to see a number of Florida Tree Snails, Liguus fasciatus. These often colorful arboreal snails have become rare, and are now listed as a species of special concern by the state of Florida.

Showy and easily harvested, Florida Tree Snails are much sought by collectors, who have diminished or eliminated the snail's populations in some areas.

There are eight described subspecies of Florida Tree Snail, and they come in a dazzling variety of color forms. This one was my favorite of those that I saw.

Florida Tree Snails enter a period of aestivation, or dormancy, in December. They scale the trunks of smooth-barked trees, and once a favorable spot is found secure themselves tightly to the tree by forming an airtight, cementlike bond at the shell opening. As the snails often select eye-level resting locales they're easily noticed.

At least 58 color varieties of Florida tree Snail have been noted, and some of them are incredibly showy; Gastropodian gems of dazzling ornateness. Greedy collectors have killed off some of these forms, and any Florida Tree Snail, whether it be a Plain Jane or rainbow of color, should be left unmolested.