Great Birding Moments #31: Glossy Ibis at last!
Glossy Ibis, Adelaide Zoo
REJOICE WITH ME!
I have finally seen a Glossy Ibis – and this one was not in a zoo or a walk-through aviary.
We had a reason to drive to Mannum this morning, about a half hour drive upstream from Murray Bridge. When we arrived I suggested to my wife that I would like about ten minutes birding at the wetlands just north of the town, near the caravan park.
This ten minutes stretched into about twenty minutes – my wife can be very patient. I managed a very good list of 38 species. I was just about to head back to the car when I spotted a solitary Glossy Ibis feeding on the mudflats about a hundred metres away. Because of the distance I didn’t even bother to take a photo. Instead I have included on this post two shots of this species taken recently in the walk-through aviary at the Adelaide Zoo.
After identifying the bird as a Glossy Ibis – and getting my wife to check it out for me to confirm it – I did a little dance. This species has been something of a bogey bird for me. I’d see it numerous times in zoos. I read about numerous sighting all over Australia – some in places I’d been just a day or two before. I knew they were widespread in many parts of Australia, but for over 30 years of birding this remained an elusive species for me.
What a relief.
Problem is now – which species takes over the mantle of Most Sought After Bird?
I’ve only got about 450 species to choose from!
For other Great Birding Moments click here.
Glossy Ibis, Adelaide Zoo
An eyeful of Ibises
No Comments »24th October, 2007; Category: Ibises
Straw Necked Ibis
Driving back home from Strathalbyn this afternoon my attention was caught by a huge flock of some three to four hundred Straw-necked Ibises feeding in a paddock adjacent to the highway. This is not an usual sight in the countryside around here. I am assuming they were feeding either on small insects in that field, or they had found a good source of an introduced snail. I’m sorry that I do not know which species of snail that are prevalent on farms around here. I do know that they are a pest to farmers, especially at harvest time as they can cause great problems for the harvesting machinery. They don’t do much for the quality of the wheat being reapt either. Without the ibises, the problem would be far worse.
I didn’t have my camera with me so you will have to make do with the one above. This was taken in our paddock a last year, one of the few times an Ibis has helped us get rid of those pesky snails. Still, we do not have a major problem because our Blue-tongue lizards largely keep them at reasonable levels.
Blue Tongue Lizard
Some Ibis on High
Straw Necked Ibis
Yesterday morning while having a cuppa out in my wife’s native plant nursery I observed a small flock of eleven Ibises flying high above us. The flock consisted of ten White Ibis and one Straw-Necked Ibis. I have frequently observed flocks of several hundreds of Ibises flying over or near the river here in Murray Bridge but we rarely get them flying over our place.
Most of the time they are Straw-Necked Ibis but occasionally there will be a few White Ibis fly over. The Straw-Necked seem to be the more common of the two species here in this part of Australia, in my experience anyway.
I haven’t any really good photos of either species yet which is a little surprising as they are very approachable and can be quite tame. In fact in some of the eastern states of Australia they are a pest species in parks and gardens. They will aggressively approach picnickers and steal food, a somewhat frightening experience for small children. (Some of our bird species can develop aggressive tendencies. For more comments click here.)
The above photo is the best I currently have. It is a special one because it was taken some time ago and is a record of the very first Straw Necked Ibis that we observed to land on our five acre block of land in over twenty years.
Updated Nov 2013.