Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The Limpkin is a Snail Specialist

By: Tom Berg

Visitors to Florida, especially south Florida, are likely to see a very unusual bird walking along the shoreline of local lakes and marshes: the Limpkin. This tall, heron-like wading bird is a mottled brown color overall with white flecks, and it has a long neck with lighter brown-and-white streaking. It has a very long, slightly curved beak that it uses to hunt its favorite food: snails.

Limpkins prefer a diet of aquatic apple snails (they make up 75% of the limpkin’s diet). When they find one of these large snails in shallow water they bring it to shore, place it in the mud (open end up), and quickly pry out the live snail from inside. It usually only takes them 10 seconds to remove the snail, and they rarely break the snail’s shell when they do it. The tip of their beak is actually slightly curved so it matches the curve of the snail’s shell. They will also eat some other freshwater snail species, and several species of freshwater mussels, as well. When they can’t find their favorite apple snails they have been known to eat insects, frogs, crayfish and lizards. If a wading limpkin sees an easy snack in the water in front of it, he will grab it and eat it.

These tropical birds can be found across most of Florida, but also in freshwater areas along the Gulf Coast shorelines of states like Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. However, they are much more common throughout the Caribbean, Central America and South America. Basically, wherever apple snails are found, limpkins will not be far behind.

Limpkins were plentiful in Florida 100 years ago, but unrestricted hunting back then decimated their numbers. They are making a strong comeback now, but they are limited by the fact that many of the marshes and wetlands where they live and breed have been drained. Habitat loss for their main food source, apple snails, has had a big impact, also.  There are wetland restoration projects in the works, and that will help! 

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