White-Faced Ibis
Continuing with the birds we saw on our most recent trip to Squaw Creek last week…
Here’s a bird we’ve never seen before. We came around a corner while driving the refuge’s roads, and we saw a little group of dark iridescent green birds busily poking their bills into the water. We had no idea what they were:
When we got home, we did some research to find out what kind of birds these little guys are.
White-Faced Ibis ~photo credit -Wikipedia
According to WhatBird.com,
This medium-sized wading bird is iridescent bronze-brown overall and has a thin band of white feathers around its bare red face, a long, down curved bill, and red eyes, legs and feet. It feeds on invertebrates, frogs and fish. It alternates several shallow rapid wing beats and short glides, and flies in a straight line formation. Sexes are similar.
- White-faced ibises are declining throughout North America, where continuing threats include draining of wetlands and the widespread use of pesticides.
- It is thought that the largest white-faced ibis nesting colony in the world can be found in the marshes around the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
- A group of ibises has many collective nouns, including a “congregation”, “stand”, and “wedge” of ibises.
We found them to be fascinating birds to watch – so busy and quick moving. Cute!
More birds to come….
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Those really are cute birds! I’ve never seen any of them. Maybe we don’t have them in our area. Squaw Creek must be a fascinating place to visit.
This one really was a puzzlement to me. I just saw my first “weird” ibis a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was a glossy ibis, but when I saw this, I decided it might have been white-faced. Now, a bird expert friend from Florida has told me that the one I saw was the glossy. Here it is. She says it’s the gray bill and legs that differentiates the glossy from the white-faced. So now we know!