Do you live near a swamp and hear some loud bird noises at night? Those sounds might be coming from limpkins, which are large, brown wading birds that used to be restricted to Florida because of their special diet of apple snails. Florida used to hold the only native population of snails in the country, but now humans have introduced South American apple snails all over the southeast.
Kelsey Low of Houston Arboretum spotted these birds in her neighborhood, “While the birds are shy and hard to see, they are INCREDIBLY LOUD. Males make raucous, trumpeting screams and wails, while females make rhythmic grunts and rattles.”
Their name stems from the bird’s walk, which to early European settlers looked similar to a limp. Limpkins’ bills are created to hunt for apple snails, acting like tweezers as they snatch them up. When the bird flies, one of their outermost feathers can make a loud buzzing sound and is used to mark the bird’s territory at night.
