Black Vulture
Description: Black Vultures are compact birds with broad wings, short tails, and powerful wingbeats. The black vulture is a large black bird with a wingspan of 4 1/2 to 5 feet.
DescriptionCarcasses of large mammals are the most common food sources. Individuals prefer to feed on fresh carcasses, but consume decaying meat as well.
Diet: The black vulture (Coragyps atratus), also known as the American black vulture, is a bird in the New World vulture family whose range extends from the northeastern United States to Peru, Central Chile and Uruguay in South America.
Habitat: The Black Vulture lives year-round in forested and open areas.
Range: They live up to 10 years.
Life Span: It's rarely found out of freshwater except during severe droughts.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Black vultures are not considered endangered.
Blue Jay
Description: The blue jay is between 9 and 12 inches in length. It is bright blue on top and white to gray on its throat, chest and belly. It has a gray-blue crest on its head and black and white bars on its wings and tail. Its bill, legs and feet are black.
DescriptionMost of the diet is vegetable matter, including acorns, beechnuts, and other nuts, many kinds of seeds, grain, berries, small fruits, sometimes cultivated fruits.
Diet: The blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) is a passerine bird in the family Corvidae, native to eastern North America. It lives in most of the eastern and central United States; some eastern populations may be migratory.
Habitat: Oak and pine woods, suburban gardens, groves, towns. Breeds in deciduous or mixed woods, avoiding purely coniferous forest.
Range: Most blue jays live to about 7 years old
Life Span: They're beautiful and highly intelligent, and their complicated behaviors may actually save other birds from predators.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Blue Jay are not considered endangered.
Cattle Egret
Description: The cattle egret is a small white heron about 19-21 inches in length with a wingspan of about three feet. It often looks like it is hunched over. It has short legs and a thick neck compared to other species of egrets. Adults have dull yellow or orange bills and dull orange legs.
DescriptionCattle Egrets follow large animals or machines and eat invertebrates stirred up from the ground.
Diet: Most Cattle Egrets breeding in North America migrate to Mexico, Central America, and the Greater Antilles.
Habitat: Farms, marshes, highway edges; often associated with cattle. Widespread in any kind of open country, including pastures, plowed fields, lawns, roadsides. Also in aquatic habitats, including flooded fields, marshes. Nests in trees or shrubs, in colonies with other herons and egrets.
Range: The average lifespan of cattle egret species is approximately 16.5 years in the wild
Life Span: It forages at the feet of grazing cattle, head bobbing with each step, or rides on their backs to pick at ticks.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Cattle egrets are not considered endangered.
Collared Doves
Description: Collared-Doves have plump bodies, small heads, and long tails. With a wingspan of 47–55 cm
DescriptionThey eat some berries and green parts of plants, as well as invertebrates.
Diet: Introduced accidentally into the Bahamas in 1974, it soon spread to the Florida mainland. Its expansion westward and northward from there since the 1980s has been remarkable, and the species is now common and abundant across much of North America, as far northwest as Oregon and Washington.
Habitat: The collared dove is a small pigeon found on farmland and in woodland, parks and gardens across the country.
Range: In the native habitat, life expectancy is 3-10 years.
Life Span: They are very gregarious birds, and groups of 10 and up to several hundred may gather at prime locations. Although they will feed peacefully in flocks of mixed birds, they may also chase off other species, including Mourning doves, Blue jays and cardinals.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Collared Doves are not considered endangered.
Blue Herron
Description: Largest of the North American herons with long legs, a sinuous neck, and thick, dagger like bill. Head, chest, and wing plumes give a shaggy appearance. In flight, the Great Blue Heron curls its neck into a tight “S'' shape; its wings are broad and rounded and its legs trail well beyond the tail.
DescriptionEats mostly fish, but also frogs, salamanders, turtles, snakes, insects, rodents, birds.
Diet: Common near the shores of open water and in wetlands over most of North America and Central America, as well as the Caribbean and the Galápagos Islands.
Habitat: These birds can survive and be found in almost any wetland habitat in North America. They are rarely found far from water. Gray herons can be found in similar habitats, but have also adapted to nesting in cities where space is available.
Range: The average lifespan for a great blue heron is around 15 years.
Life Span: When foraging, they stand silently along riverbanks, lake shores, or in wet meadows, waiting for prey to come by, which they then strike with their bills.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Blue Heron races are not considered endangered.
Great Egrets
Description: Great Egrets are tall, long-legged wading birds with long, S-curved necks and long, dagger-like bills. In flight, the long neck is tucked in and the legs extend far beyond the tip of the short tail.
DescriptionGreat Egrets are opportunistic foragers. They primarily consume fish, but also eat crustaceans, amphibians, and small mammals.
Diet: The great white egret or great white heron is a large, widely distributed egret, with four subspecies found in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and southern Europe.
Habitat: Marshes, ponds, shores, mud flats. Usually forages in rather open situations, as along edges of lakes, large marshes, shallow coastal lagoons and estuaries; also along rivers in wooded country.
Range: Great egrets usually live for approximately 15 years.
Life Span: Great Egrets fly slowly but powerfully: with just two wingbeats per second their cruising speed is around 25 miles an hour.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Great egrets are not considered endangered.
Green Heron
Description: Compared with most herons, Green Herons are short and stocky, with relatively short legs and thick necks that are often drawn up against their bodies. They have broad, rounded wings and a long, dagger-like bill.
DescriptionGreen Herons are opportunistic feeders, with fish as the primary food source.
Diet: Eastern breeders migrate via Florida, the Gulf Coast, and the Caribbean, while western breeders head through Mexico.
Habitat: Green Herons inhabit small, freshwater wetlands, ponds, and stream-sides with thick vegetation at their margins. In winter, they frequent coastal areas and mangrove swamps
Range: Green herons may live up to eight years.
Life Span: The Green Heron is highly aggressive and defensive.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Green Herons are not considered endangered.
Common Ground-Doves
Description: Common Ground-Doves are tiny doves with short, round wings, short tails, and short, thin bills. They are stocky, with short legs, and they shuffle as they walk.
DescriptionFeeds on a wide variety of seeds, especially those of grasses and weeds, also waste grain in farm fields. Also eats small fruits and berries, and reportedly eats some insects.
Diet: The common ground dove (Columbina passerina) is a small bird that inhabits the southern United States, parts of Central America, the Caribbean and northern South America. It is considered to be the smallest dove that inhabits the United States.
Habitat: The common ground dove lives in open areas that have trees and bushes.
Range: In the wild, these animals can live up to 7.2 years
Life Span: Quiet and unobtrusive, the little ground dove walks on the ground in open bushy places in the southern states.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Ground dove is not considered endangered.
Hummingbirds
Description: In general, hummingbirds are small birds, usually between three and five inches in length. They have long, narrow beaks used for extracting nectar from flowers. Their feathers are frequently iridescent colors, and range from brown, to blue, green, purple, red, and pink.
DescriptionHummingbirds have a long, needle-like beak perfect for reaching into flowers for nectar. Their main diet consists of this nectar from various flowers as well as small insects like aphids, beetles, and mosquitos
Diet: The almost 340 species of hummingbirds are entirely restricted to the New World, where they can be found from Tierra Del Fuego to southern Alaska and from below sea level deserts to steamy tropical forests at elevations of up to 16,000 feet in the Andes of South America.
Habitat: Hummingbirds are wild birds with a diverse habitat. They live in forests, deserts, lowlands, and mountaintops depending on the species. They live in the country and in the cities. If you create a habitat for them, they will live in your backyard or property.
Range: An humming Bird has a lifespan of about 3-5 years in the wild
Life Span: Hummingbirds are not very social at all and live very solitary lives, only coming together to mate or grudging share a hummingbird feeder.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: None of the species that occur in the United States and Canada are threatened with extinction. But all of the hummingbirds that are currently endangered have very small ranges in Mexico and Central and South America.
Limpkin
Description: The limpkin is a somewhat large bird, 64–73 cm (25–29 in) long. The gangly, brown-and-white Limpkin looks a bit like a giant rail or perhaps a young night-heron. Its long bill is bent and twisted at the tip, an adaptation for removing snails from the shell.
DescriptionLimpkins feed primarily on apple snails, but they will also eat insects, worms, and mussels.
Diet: The limpkin occurs from peninsular Florida (and formerly the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia) and southern Mexico through the Caribbean and Central America to northern Argentina.
Habitat: The limpkin inhabits shallows along rivers, streams, lakes, and in marshes, swamps and sloughs in Florida.
Range: An limpkin has a inconclusive lifespan range
Life Span: Male Limpkins are very territorial and engage in aggressive and ritualistic confrontations that include charging, loud calling and retreating.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Limpkins are protected by the U.S. Migratory Bird Treaty Act and take 68A-4.001, F.A.C. Florida's Endangered and Threatened Species Rule.
Mourning Doves
Description: The mourning dove is 9-13 inches in length with a wingspan of 15-18 inches. It has a grayish-brown body; a long, pointed tail bordered in white; a small, round head; a small, thin, black bill; and small pink legs and feet.
DescriptionMourning doves are primarily seed-eaters, not insect-eaters. These birds can and do eat weed seeds, which is certainly valuable to gardeners as well as farmers, or anyone living near overgrown vacant lots
Diet: The species is resident throughout the Greater Antilles, most of Mexico, the Continental United States, southern Canada, and the Atlantic archipelago of Bermuda.
Habitat: Found in almost any kind of open or semi-open habitat in temperate parts of North America, including forest clearings, farmland, suburbs, prairies, deserts.
Range: The average life span for an adult Mourning Dove is 1.5 years.
Life Span: Male mourning doves can be very aggressive when defending their territory and will puff up their necks and hop in pursuit of other birds on the ground.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Mourning doves are not considered endangered.
Red Winged Black Bird
Description: A stocky, broad-shouldered blackbird with a slender, conical bill and a medium-length tail.
DescriptionFeeds on many insects, especially in summer, including beetles, caterpillars, grasshoppers, and others; also spiders, millipedes, snails.
Diet: Non-migratory red-winged blackbirds are in the western US and Central America. Red Wings that breed in Canada and the northern US are in the southern US, feeding on grain, putting on fat, and starting to migrate north.
Habitat: Look for Red-winged Blackbirds in fresh and saltwater marshes, along watercourses, water hazards on golf courses, and wet roadsides, as well as drier meadows and old fields. In winter, you can find them at crop fields, feedlots, and pastures.
Range: Red-winged blackbirds usually live for about two years in the wild.
Life Span: Males guard the nest with loud calls and displays, or by chasing other male birds away. They can spend more than one-quarter of daylight hours defending their territory. Young are dependent on females for five weeks after they leave the nest.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: For decades, control measures such as poisoning, trapping, and shooting, along with habitat loss and climate change, have resulted in a substantial decline in Red-winged Blackbird populations.
Nightjars
Description: Nightjars fly after prey or hunt on the ground for food such as insects, flies, beetles, ants, and caterpillars.
DescriptionNightjars inhabit all continents other than Antarctica, as well as some island groups such as Madagascar, the Seychelles, New Caledonia and the islands of Caribbean.
Diet: Nightjars occupy a wide range of habitats, from deserts to rainforests but are most common in open country with some vegetation.
Habitat: Nightjars occupy a wide range of habitats, from deserts to rainforests but are most common in open country with some vegetation.
Range: Nightjars breed when aged one year, and typically live four years.
Life Span: Birds of this family are commonly called nightjars, from their jarring cries, or goatsuckers, from the ancient superstition that they used their very wide mouths to milk goats.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Nightjars are considered endangered.
Red Bellied Woodpecker
Description: Red-bellied woodpeckers are medium sized birds with a distinctive black-and-white patterned back and a long, chisel-shaped bill. Adults weigh about 72.5 grams (range 56 to 91 g), and are 22.9 to 26.7 cm long.
DescriptionLike most woodpeckers, eats many insects. Diet may be more than 50% plant material at some seasons, including acorns and other nuts, wild and cultivated fruits, seeds. Occasional items in diet include tree frogs, eggs of small birds, oozing sap, and even small fish.
Diet: The red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) is a medium-sized woodpecker of the family Picidae. It breeds mainly in the eastern United States, ranging as far south as Florida and as far north as Canada.
Habitat: Red-bellied Woodpeckers are common in many Eastern woodlands and forests, from old stands of oak and hickory to young hardwoods and pines.
Range: The USGS Longevity Records of North American Birds determined through bird banding that the average lifespan of a Red-bellied Woodpecker is 12.10 years in the wild.
Life Span: They are active during the day. They are also solitary, except during the breeding season when they spend time with a mate and their chicks.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Red bellied woodpeckers are not considered endangered.
Starling
Description: They are stocky black birds with short tails, triangular wings, and long, pointed bills. Though they're sometimes resented for their abundance and aggressiveness, they're still dazzling birds when you get a good look.
DescriptionStarlings will eat a variety of seeds, nuts and legumes
Diet: The common starling has about 12 subspecies breeding in open habitats across its native range in temperate Europe and across the Palearctic to western Mongolia, and it has been introduced to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa and Fiji.
Habitat: Starling is a bird of lowlands, found mainly on non-mountainous terrain.
Range: Starlings usually live for about 12-3 years in the wild
Life Span: Starlings are gregarious and will breed in close proximity to other pairs. They are usually monogamous. Fights over breeding sites can result in death. The birds grip each other with their feet while pecking.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Yes, Starling breeding numbers have fallen by 70% in the 25 years to 2014, and 83% since 1969.
Swallow-Tailed Kites
Description: Swallow-tailed Kites are a sharp contrast of bright-white head and underparts and gleaming black wings, back, and tail. From below, the wing linings are white and the flight feathers are black
DescriptionThough adult Swallow-tailed Kites eat mostly flying insects, they feed their young with many types of small vertebrates - including tree frogs, lizards, nestling birds, and snakes.
Diet: The population that nests in the United States breeds from coastal South Carolina to Florida and west to Louisiana and eastern Texas.
Habitat: Requires tall trees for nesting and nearby open country with abundant prey. In North America found mostly in open pine woods near marsh or prairie, cypress swamps, other riverside swamp forest. In tropics, also found in lowland rain forest and mountain cloud forest.
Range: It has a lifespan of 6 years.
Life Span: Swallow-tailed kites are social birds; they may forage in groups and often roost communally, especially before migration.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Though not federally listed, the swallow-tailed kite is listed as endangered in the state of South Carolina, where the primary threat to its is habitat loss and pesticide use.
Tricolored Heron
Description: The Tricolored Heron is a sleek and slender heron adorned in blue-gray, lavender, and white. The white stripe down the middle of its sinuous neck and its white belly set it apart from other dark herons.
DescriptionThe diet of the tricolored heron primarily consists of fish.
Diet: The tricolored heron (Egretta tricolor), formerly known as the Louisiana heron, is a small species of heron native to coastal parts of the Americas; in the Atlantic region, it ranges from the northeastern United States, south along the coast, through the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.
Habitat: Tricolored herons inhabit fresh and saltwater marshes, estuaries, mangrove swamps, lagoons, and river deltas
Range: Tricolored herons may live as long as 17 years in the wild.
Life Span: Tricolored Herons gracefully walk through wetlands as other herons do, but they also run after fish with sharp turns and stops, balancing with their wings.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC lakes, parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Tricolored heron are not endangered.
White Ibis
Description: White Ibises are large wading birds with football-shaped bodies. They have long legs and a long neck that they hold out straight in flight. Their bill is long and curved.
DescriptionThe diet of the white ibis primarily consists of crabs, crayfish, fish, snakes, frogs, and insects.
Diet: The American white ibis is most common in Florida, where over 30,000 have been counted in a single breeding colony. It also occurs throughout the Caribbean, on both coasts of Mexico (from Baja California southwards) and Central America, and as far south as Colombia and Venezuela.
Habitat: White ibis prefer coastal marshes and wetlands, feeding in fresh, brackish, and saltwater environments.
Range: On average, ibises live for anywhere from 16 to 27 years.
Life Span: Highly sociable at all seasons, roosting and feeding in flocks, nesting in large colonies.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: White ibis are not endangered.
White Winged Doves
Description: White-winged Doves are brown overall, with a dark line on the cheek. A white stripe at the edge of the folded wing becomes, as the bird takes flight, a bright flash in the middle of a dark wing. The tail is tipped in white and set off with black stripes from the gray underside.
Description They're fond of seeds, including sunflower, milo, corn, safflower, and they may also eat berries from shrubs
Diet: White-winged Doves (Zenaida asiatica) are semi-tropical doves whose native range extends from the southwestern U.S. through Mexico and Central America, into parts of western South America, and to some Caribbean islands.
Habitat: River woods, mesquites, saguaros, groves, towns. Found in a variety of semi-open habitats in southwest, including native brushlands in Texas and deserts farther west, plus chaparral and open oak woods; also adapts quickly to altered habitats, such as farmland, suburbs, citrus groves, plantings of trees in grassland..
Range: Typical lifespan is 10 or 15 years.
Life Span: In courtship display, male flaps up and then glides down in wide circle.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: White winged doves are not endangered.
Wood Pigeon
Description: The Common wood pigeon is a large member of the dove and pigeon family. Adult birds bear a series of green and white patches on their necks and a pink patch on their chest.
DescriptionThey eat grain, seeds, shoots, buds and berries
Diet: Wood Pigeons are found across the UK and US in fields and woods, and also in towns and cities where they frequent parks and gardens.
Habitat: Wood pigeons inhabit deciduous or coniferous woodlands, shrubland, cultivated areas, and are commonly seen in parks, gardens, towns, and cities.
Range: The typical lifespan for a woodpigeon is three years.
Life Span: Males exhibit aggressive behaviour towards each other during the breeding season by jumping and flapping wings at each other.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Not endangered
Yellow Bellied Sapsucker
Description: Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are mostly black and white with boldly patterned faces. Both sexes have red foreheads, and males also have red throats
DescriptionArthropods, tree sap, fruits, and nuts compose the majority of the yellow-bellied sapsucker's diet.
Diet: The breeding range of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker covers most of the boreal zone from east-central Alaska to southern Newfoundland.
Habitat: Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers live in both hardwood and conifer forests up to about 6,500 feet elevation. They often nest in groves of small trees such as aspens, and spend winters in open woodlands.
Range: The oldest known Yellow-bellied Sapsucker was a male, and at least 7 years, 9 months old.
Life Span: The throat and chin can be used to differentiate between the sexes, as they are white in the female, and red in the male.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Population is declining but not considered endangered
Rose Breasted Grosbeak
Description: The rose-breasted grosbeak, colloquially called "cut-throat" due to its coloration, is a large, seed-eating grosbeak in the cardinal family. It is primarily a foliage gleaner. Males have black heads, wings, backs, and tails, and a bright rose colored patch on their white breast.
DescriptionFavorite foods of the Evening Grosbeak include seeds, fruits and insects
Diet: Rose-breasted Grosbeaks fly from North American breeding grounds to Central and northern South America.
Habitat: Deciduous woods, orchards, groves. Breeds mostly in open deciduous woods, sometimes in mixed woods, favoring edges or openings with a combination of shrubs and tall trees rather than unbroken forest. In migration, it may occur in any wooded or semi-open area.
Range: Rose-breasted grosbeaks have an average maximum lifespan of 7.3 years in the wild, and up to 24 years in captivity.
Life Span: Rose-breasted grosbeaks hop on the ground and have an undulating flight pattern. When startled they often freeze and they will flick their wings, spread their tails, raise their head feathers, and give chase towards a threat. Pairs chase away others of the species during the breeding season.
Behavior: They are found throughout the KLAC parks, and skies.
Where It's Found: Population is declining but not considered endangered