Experts share concern after striking pink birds show up at popular vacation destination: 'Looks like it came straight out of a Dr. Seuss book'

Birders may be tickled pink to find roseate spoonbills along the South Carolina coast, but the increasing relocations of these glamorous birds raises concerns about the impacts of habitat loss and rising global temperatures.

What's happening?

Naturalists are noticing a growing number of roseate spoonbills taking up year-round residency in the South Carolina Lowcountry, including in marshes around Hilton Head, as local outlet The Island Packet reported in March.

The distinctive species — which sports Barbie-pink feathers, a glaring red eye, and a huge spoonlike bill — "looks like it came straight out of a Dr. Seuss book," according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. 

Sightings of these birds are not unheard of in South Carolina and farther north. The wandering waders are known to travel far from traditional nesting areas in Florida Bay and parts of Louisiana and Texas (others nest and migrate farther south). What's increasing is the population that's lingering in the Lowcountry — pushed north from south Florida by the effects of warming temperatures and loss of habitat, as the Packet detailed. 

Jenn Clementoni, a local master naturalist, told the outlet there are now year-round residents in and around Beaufort County.

"It's very clear that they're following the temperature," Audubon Florida researcher Jerry Lorenz, who has studied the spoonbills for 30 years, told the publication. "The country is getting warmer, the world is getting warmer … these birds are taking advantage of warmer temperatures." 

Why is the relocation of roseate spoonbills concerning?

Lorenz began observing an exodus from Florida Bay in the early 2000s, per the Packet. Roseate spoonbills — the only spoonbills in the Americas — require shallow water for feeding. If water stays high for too long, as has happened with sea level rise in the bay, the birds aren't able to feed and live locally. So they've moved inland and north, Lorenz said.

The birds have faced adversity before. The U.S. population was nearly hunted to extinction for its fashionable feathers in the 1800s. By the 1970s, Florida's spoonbills had made a comeback. Now they're among a set of climate migrant species seeking new homes. And, as they gain numbers in South Carolina, they might compete for resources with local natives, per the Packet.

"You can't call them exotic or introduced or invasive," Lorenz said. "They're native. It's just the climate is changing."

What's being done about the relocation of roseate spoonbills?

To provide healthy habitats and clean water for roseate spoonbills — and for humans and other species — there's a need for conservation and restoration. "What does affect them is making sure we have healthy, clean marshes," Clementoni explained to the Packet.

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Lorenz said that governments need plans for managing species that move into new ranges.

We can each take part in efforts to maintain healthy habitats. More broadly, we can limit global temperature rise through actions that reduce energy bills while cutting heat-trapping pollution.

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