ANY ANI WILL DO

Ilove smooth-billed anis, despite the fact that every time I hear the word “ani,” it triggers the song “Sugar” by The Archies in my head. Only instead of hearing, “Sugar… oh honey, honey,” I hear, “Ani… oh ani, ani.” And the voice that sings it sounds more like George Harrison singing, “My Sweet Lord” than it does the guy who sang for The Archies. (I blame this on a small number of head injuries in my youth.)

I bring this up because the song has been in my head for a week or so, ever since one was reported at Fort Zachary Taylor. I couldn’t get over there when I saw the first report of the bird, and I didn’t expect it to stick around. But a few days later I got a text from Kevin Christman telling me he was at the park, looking at the bird.

It took me an hour to get there – Saturday morning after a late night – and by the time I did, the bird was gone. We combed the park, but without a lot of luck. I figured if I got there earlier in the morning in the next day or so, I might still have a chance of seeing it.

Anis are on the weirder end of the songbird spectrum. They’re actually closely related to cuckoos, though where most cuckoos tend to be shy and receding, with muted, earth-toned plumage, anis are larger and more gregarious, with iridescent black plumage and a cartoonishly high aquiline arc to their bill. They are essentially the goth kids of the taxonomic family, a notion that isn’t diminished by the fact that their call sounds like an ‘80s electronic simulation of what a bird call might sound like.

The word “ani,” by the way, is pronounced on-ee. It came from the Tupi tribe of the upper Amazon Basin sans further etymology. “Smooth-billed” is in contrast with the closely-related groove-billed ani, though as far as I can tell, the smooth-billed ani is the only bird in the world with the word “smooth” in the name. How many species get their own adjective?

They’re usually seen in pairs or small groups. (One account I read said they were often seen “in larger groups of up to 17 individuals,” which made me think, What, no one’s ever seen a group of 18 or more anis? Such a specific number.)

The smooth-billed ani is a tropical and subtropical species, with a range that covers the Caribbean and South America. They were very rare in Florida until the 1930s, but their population grew rapidly, breeding as far north on the east coast as Titusville, and as far south as Key West.

I remember sometime around 2002 or so, sitting in a classroom at Fairchild Tropical Garden, taking the Florida Master Naturalist course, looking out the window, and seeing my first one. It was running across the ground with a Cuban anole in its mouth, the anole’s tail whipping around while its limbs pawed at the air. It looked more like the stop-motion “Release the Kraken!” scene from Clash of the Titans to me than it did an actual bird trying to ingest its necessary daily caloric intake.

I saw my first one in Key West soon after, at Indigenous Park. It was in a small cluster of mangroves toward the bocce courts. And I have looked for an ani in that same cluster of mangroves every time I’ve been in the park since then, with no further luck.

Fairchild was one of the more reliable spots for them, as was Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, Flamingo in Everglades National Park, and the service roads near Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. But then those populations began to decline, their numbers shrinking until they disappeared from those places. (In 2005 the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was petitioned to consider protected status for the species, but essentially blew it off.)

Nobody really knows what happened to the birds. There’s not a lot of data. Some birders blamed it on development and changes in the landscape. But smooth-billed anis are not delicate creatures, habitat-wise. In Central America and the Caribbean, you often see them in the weediest lots and the scrubbiest habitats, often in some of the most human-altered landscapes. And the anis pretty much came in and found their eco-niche in South Florida coincident with the development era.

Over the years since, though, I’ve seen smooth-billed anis in the Lower Keys a number of times, in out-of-the-way places such as Sugarloaf Key and the Dry Tortugas. My most memorable sighting was out at the Marquesas, when I saw a group of six, which gave me a lot of hope. Maybe there still was a resident flock or family here. But I’ve been back there since, and I’ve asked everyone I know who’s ever fished out there, and there has been no sign of them.

The theory I’ve heard about their decline that makes the most sense to me is, maybe some kind of deadly-to-them virus or communicable disease went through the South Florida population – an ani pandemic of sorts – which would explain the population crash and the fact that when I’ve seen them, it’s mostly been in out-ofthe-way, isolated places – places a virus or communicable disease may have passed by. But that is just a theory with, again, not much data to support it.

I went back to the park early this week and spent a lot of time staring at the bush near the moat where it was last seen. Then I walked out across the field, a.k.a. the Back 40, then looped around the park, looking into every bush I could, without much luck.

I may not go back to look for that particular bird again, but I will go back, and I will keep looking. I never want the last smooth-billed ani I saw to be the last smooth-billed ani I see.