Anhinga, Anhinga anhinga

Anhinga, Anhinga anhinga leucogaster. Photograph taken in the Florida Everglades, January 2019.

Anhinga, Anhinga anhinga leucogaster. Photograph taken in the greater Zihuatanejo area, Guerrero, March 2018. Photograph courtesy of Ron Woheau, Zihuatanejo.

Anhinga, Anhinga anhinga leucogaster. Photograph taken in the coastal region of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, October 2022. Photograph and identification courtesy of of Faith Hubsch, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Anhinga, Anhinga anhinga leucogaster. Photograph taken in the coastal region of Costa Rica, February 2023. Photograph courtesy of Dr. Tom Bartol, Carlsbad, California.

The Anhinga, Anhinga anhinga, is a member of the Anhingidae Family of Anhingas. They are mid-sized in stature. In Mexico they are found in the coastal regions within the Atlantic Slope from Tampico, Tamaulipas to Belize, excluding the Yucatán Peninsula, and within the Pacific Slope from southern Sinaloa to Guatemala at elevations up to 900 m (2,950 feet).

From a conservation perspective, the Anhinga is categorized by the IUCN as Least Concern with stable, widely distributed populations. They are found in shallow, slow-moving sheltered freshwater that have nearby perches that they utilize for drying and sunning. They consume a wide variety of small to medium-sized wetland fishes and limited amounts of crustaceans and invertebrates.