Owner Comments:
With our next coin, we have two different modern dinosaurs to discuss: The Roseate Spoonbill (species name Platalea ajaja) and The Anhinga (species name Anhinga anhinga). I was unable to find the breadth of the information on these guys that I’ve been able to find on some of the other species, but that works to my advantage on this coin as I can comfortably cover two birds with one coin.
Both the Anhinga and the Roseate Spoonbill are water birds, living a semi-aquatic lifestyle much like the Great Blue Heron covered earlier. Both of these birds also share a similar range, ranging from the Gulf Coast of North America, the Caribbean and into South America. The Roseate Spoonbill is a decently sized modern theropod, with a length of 2.3 to 2.8 feet, a wingspan of 3.9 to 4.3 feet and a weight between 2.6 to 4 pounds. The Anhinga is sized in a similar range to the Roseate Spoonbill, with a length of around 3 feet, a wingspan of 3.7 feet and a weight between 2.3 to 3 pounds. The Anhinga is a glossy black green in coloration, with a black-blue tail that is also glossy. The Roseate Spoonbill is a pink color similar to flamingos and like flamingos, this pink coloration is derived from the carotenoid pigment canthaxanthin, which they derive from their diets. Without this diet derived pigment, Roseate Spoonbills are white in coloration.
Both the Anhinga and the Roseate Spoonbill are predatory, with the Anhinga preying upon fish and amphibians. The Roseate Spoonbill preys upon crustaceans, aquatic insects, frogs, newts and very small fish. The hunting strategies are different as well. The Anhinga is a diver, diving after prey head first and staying submerged for some length of time depending on the difficulty of their hunt. The Roseate Spoonbill hunts by moving its distinctive, spoon-shaped bill back and forth through the water and filtering out their small prey items. An interesting fact about the Anhinga is that, unlike most other water birds, its feathers are not waterproof. This feature evolved to aid the Anhinga in making its dives and staying submerged but it also means that an Anhinga cannot fly when wet. It has to wait for its feathers to dry in order to take flight. The Roseate Spoonbill, on the other hand, has waterproof feathers like most other water birds.
As of right now, I was unable to locate any breeding behavior information on either of these guys, but I’m going to keep researching. If I find it, I will add it here. However, both the Anhinga and the Roseate Spoonbill live for around 16 years. Information on predators of these birds was also lacking, but it is thought that they face predation from large avian predators like Bald Eagles, Golden Eagles and possibly Harpy Eagles in the South American part of their overlapped ranges.
On the coin, the Anhinga is the bird in the foreground and the Roseate Spoonbill is the bird in the background. Water birds are cool because they are one of the oldest families of dinosaurs still in existence. The oldest known dinosaur from the Euornithe group, which is the dinosaur group within the larger Avialae clade that modern birds belong to, is a water bird. Archaeornithura meemannae, which lived 130.7 million years ago in what is now northeastern China, looked similar to the Anhinga, though it was much smaller at 6 inches tall with shorter legs and a shorter beak. While the information I was able to locate on the Roseate Spoonbill and Anhinga was sparse compared to some of the other dinosaurs featured in this set, they still make excellent and fascinating additions to this collection of modern dinosaurs.