Nesting spoonbills return to Florida Bay

MIAMI, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- The number of roseate spoonbills nesting in Florida Bay has jumped this year after falling to a 50-year low last year, scientists say.

Researchers studying the wading birds of Everglades National Park are unsure why the spoonbill population plunged in 2011 and why they appear to be on the rebound, The Miami Herald reported.

"The system here is really a boom or bust system,'' Sonny Bass, the park's supervisor wildlife ecologist, said. "You can either have a really good year when everything comes off right or you can have a really bad year. Historically, that's been the case but it's probably exaggerated now on both ends.''

In 2009, a year of drought, the birds reproduced at their highest rate since the 1940s, followed by a baby bust in 2010 when many nests were flooded by heavy rains. Last year, the drought returned, but not the nesting frenzy and the number of spoonbill nests fell by one-third from 2010's low levels.

Bass and Jerry Lorenz, a scientist with the National Audubon Society, are unsure why spoonbills did not recover last year. This year, they have counted twice the number of nests they saw in 2011.

"I'm hoping it was just a weird blip," Lorenz told the Herald.