Snake Key Rookery
by Carla Parris
Title
Snake Key Rookery
Artist
Carla Parris
Medium
Photograph - Digital Photograph
Description
Snake Key, which is one of Central Florida's Cedar Keys, has a natural bird rookery that is home to brown pelicans, white ibis, double-crested cormorants, tricolored herons, great egrets, and roseate spoonbills, as well as a variety of others wading birds.
Interestingly, neighboring Seahorse Key previously was home to the rookery, but for unknown reasons, the birds abruptly and mysteriously abandoned the island in 2015. Thankfully, they relocated to Snake Key, and are thriving there. And more recently, a colony of brown pelicans has settled on Deadman's Key.
Here, adult birds are perched in the treetops and gathered on the narrow beach of Snake Key.
In addition to the colonial nesters that are part of the rookery on Snake Key, magnificent frigatebirds visit the key during the spring. There are also bald eagles on the island.
Where nesting birds abound, so do snakes! This was the case on Seahorse Key when the rookery was there, and is now the case, appropriately, on Snake Key which is home to a dense population of cottonmouths.
The Cedar Keys are a group of remote, largely undeveloped, and largely uninhabited barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico off the west coast of Florida. Several of the more remote, outermost islands are part of Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge.
Uploaded
November 23rd, 2022
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