JN Ding Darling NWR roseate spoonbill
— the pink the mangrove water leaves behind.
Not only on a wall.
JN Ding Darling NWR roseate spoonbill, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A roseate spoonbill working the shallows on the north side of Wildlife Drive. The colour comes from what it eats: shrimp and small fish carrying the same carotenoids that turn flamingos pink. The bird sweeps its spatulate bill side to side through the silt, head down, unbothered. Low tide pulls the water back from the mangrove roots and the spoonbills move in. The refuge was named for Jay Norwood Darling, the editorial cartoonist who drew the first federal Duck Stamp in 1934. — from the studio
The place, in three passes.
The refuge covers roughly 6,400 acres on the bay side of Sanibel Island, on Florida's Gulf Coast. It is part of a larger complex of mangrove estuary managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and named in 1967 for Jay Norwood "Ding" Darling, the Pulitzer-winning cartoonist who pushed Congress to fund waterfowl habitat in the 1930s. The four-mile Wildlife Drive runs one-way along a tidal flat, open Saturday through Thursday, closed Fridays. Hurricane Ian struck the island in September 2022 and the refuge spent two years rebuilding the visitor centre and trails.
The pink is dietary. Roseate spoonbills feed on grass shrimp, killifish, and other small crustaceans that carry carotenoid pigments — the same family of compounds that colours flamingos and salmon. The bird metabolises the pigments into its feathers, so the colour deepens with age and feeding success; juveniles are paler, almost white at the neck. The deepest pinks belong to breeding adults in spring, when the wing coverts turn carmine. Audubon counts the species as a conservation success: nearly extirpated from Florida by 1940 plume hunting, the population has recovered to several thousand breeding pairs.
Wildlife Drive opens at sunrise and closes at sunset, with the gate locking promptly. The road is one-way, four miles, and the refuge asks drivers to use the pull-offs rather than stop in the lane. The fee is five dollars per vehicle. Roseate spoonbills are most reliable in the first two hours after a falling tide, when the mudflats on the north side of the drive expose feeding lanes. Bring a long lens; the birds tolerate cars but flush from people on foot. Winter, December through March, is the best window for both weather and bird density.
