File:Anhinga anhinga (anhinga) (Sanibel Island, Florida, USA) 3.jpg

English: Anhinga anhinga (Linnaeus, 1766) - anhinga in Florida, USA (March 2014). (photo by Mary Ellen St. John)

Birds are small to large, warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered, bipedal vertebrates capable of powered flight (although some are secondarily flightless). Many scientists characterize birds as dinosaurs, but this is consequence of the physical structure of evolutionary diagrams. Birds aren’t dinosaurs. They’re birds. The logic & rationale that some use to justify statements such as “birds are dinosaurs” is the same logic & rationale that results in saying “vertebrates are echinoderms”. Well, no one says the latter. No one should say the former, either.

However, birds are evolutionarily derived from theropod dinosaurs. Birds first appeared in the Triassic or Jurassic, depending on which avian paleontologist you ask. They inhabit a wide variety of terrestrial and surface marine environments, and exhibit considerable variation in behaviors and diets. Anhingas are piscivores, using their sharp, pointed bills to spear fish and swallow them whole. The feathers of anhingas are not waterproof, which is unusual for a water bird. Upon leaving the water, anhingas dry their feathers by standing in the Sun with their wings spread out.

Natural distribution: southeastern North America to southern South America

Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Aves, Suliformes, Anhingidae

Locality: Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, northern Sanibel Island, Gulf of Mexico coast of southern Florida, USA

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See info. at:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anhinga