Black Skimmer, skimming

A Black Skimmer slices the water in a Florida wetland. I made this photo in 2011, and always liked it, in part because I really like this species. Black Skimmers have an elongated lower mandible, and are adept at doing just what their name suggests - skimming low over still waters, cutting the surface with their specialized bill, and harvesting whatever small piscine life is unlucky enough to be in the path. The bird is like a feathered crop duster of doom to the aquatic crowd, dropping from the sky and plowing a trail of destruction through the shallows.

We've never had a Black Skimmer in Ohio, and I don't expect that we will. But if one were to turn up here, now, it'd hurt its beak. Most all of our water is still in ice, and that doesn't make for good skimming. Here in the North it is the winter that won't end. It is 16 F as I write, and tomorrow's high will be 18 F, dropping to a low of 6 tomorrow night. For the most part, low temperatures such as those are forecast for the next week or so.

Perhaps if I offer up this Black Skimmer as a photographic propitiation to the gods of summer, heat, and sun, they will make winter relinquish its hold.

A razorbill of a different stripe

When I was in Florida recently, I apparently missed fellow Ohioan Dane Adams by a short leap and a bound. He and his wife were in the same area, around the same time, and of course Dane was making some of his trademark awesome photographs. Those of you who read this blog regularly will recall some of Dane's beautiful images that he has allowed me to share.

Well, wait'll you get a load of the one that follows.

This picture, of a chunky Black Skimmer, is mine. I took it near Sanibel Island as the odd-looking bird rested with a platoon of other skimmers. I would say that the first thing about a skimmer that grab's one eye is that bill. It's fat, asymmetrical, and bright orange at the base. Being nearly as thick as the bird's head, one might think that this appendage would be an awkward forward-heavy thing to have stuck to the front of one's face.

Here's Dane's photo. Wow! Look at the razor thinness of that beak! It seems as if the bill tapers to nary more than the thickness of a sheet of paper near its tip. Scroll back up the first photo and blink at the contrast.

Skimmers hunt by flying just over the water's surface, slicing the lower mandible of their incredible bill through the upper strata of the water column. I have photos of that, and discussed their feeding in more detail, HERE.

As we can see from Dane's photo, the lower mandible of a Black Skimmer would offer little in the way of resistance; it is incredibly hydrodynamic. Not only does its thinness produce no drag, its shape also creates nearly no turbulence, which might alert potential fishy victims that something very bad for them rapidly approaches.

Thanks to Dane Adams for sharing his spectacular photo.

Black Skimmer

Highly gregarious and ultra-cool, a squadron of Black Skimmers rests on a Florida sandbar.

At ease, skimmers look like grounded F-14 fighter jets. When the pack takes to the air, they are transformed into a gracefully coordinated body of long-winged birds that commands one's eye. Moving in sinuous columns, the skimmers put on quite the airshow.

When seen up close, a Black Skimmer takes on a comical appearance, what with the orange-based Bozo bill. They also look faintly thuggish; like an avian tough wearing a black hoodie pulled low over the eyes.

Hold your thumb over the bill and temporarily block it from view, and the bird looks long, sleek, and ternlike. Expose the bill, and the skimmer takes on an undeniably odd and amusing look. It's as if its beak is deformed. But it isn't - the skimmer offers evidence of the miraculous possibilities wrought by fits and spurts of evolution; how forces of selection can shape such strange-looking features that are so beautifully functional.

A Black Skimmer's normal working environment: inches off the water. This one appears to be scolding its reflection in a fishy backwater marsh. Agile and adept at close-quarter high-speed flight operations, skimmers swoosh low over the deck like barn-storming feathered crop dusters.

And here's how they get the skimmer tag. Swooshing towards the water in a graceful descent, the Black Skimmer gently lowers that elongated lower mandible into the water and slices a long wake.

Why?

Fish. In an amazing show of aeronautics, reaction time, and coordination, the skimmer sluices along, hoping to come into contact with a minnow or other small aquatic animal. When contact is made, it snaps that powerful thick bill shut in a nanosecond and secures a meal.

Pretty amazing stuff.