I was but a cute owlet when I saw my first "Rosie" flying over Siesta Key. This being Flor- ida, home to Miami Vice re-runs, I assumed "Flamingo!" It's a common error among us all, probably due to watching too much CSI: Ft. Myers. (Warning! Gratuitous gore!) And I ever so wanted to grow rosy-feathered-dawn plumage. Mama assured me I would if I just ate enough carotenoids, particularly those containing astaxanthin. "No roseate feathers unless you finish your crustaceans." Hmm ...
These exquisitely colored feathers were high- ly prized as fashion accessories: "The feathers of the wings and tail of the Roseate Spoonbill are manufactured into fans by the Indians and Negroes of Florida; and at St. Augustine these ornaments form a regular article of trade." (J.J. Audubon, circa 1832).
Then came the professional plume hunters with their guns, turning the fine art of hunting for decorative plumes into assembly-line car- nage. The favored method of collecting feath- ers was to shoot the parents while they were nesting in communal colonies, leaving their chicks to die and other nearby nesting birds to abandon their trampled chick and egg nests. This method was so brutally efficient and so financially profitable that by the 1930s, tens of thousands of rosy-dawn feathered fans graced the wardrobes of fashionable ladies all over the world, but the Florida population of Rose- ate Spoonbills was down to some 35 breeding pairs.
Thanks to federal protection and the advo- cacy of the Audubon Society, the number of Roseate Spoonbill breeding pairs in Florida today has climbed to 1,000. Still, that's not
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