Why are Australian White Ibis so derided? Stop and take a good look at a White Ibis. It is a really showy bird. It is large and white with a brown eye set in a black, bald head. It has pink creasing along its nape, a long, decurved, dark bill and red under-wing patches that follow the line of the wing bone, turning bright scarlet during breeding. Its dark feet are super hip with sneaker-like go-faster silver stripes along each toe. Black and white lacy plumes at the bird’s vent finish off the look.
White Ibis share the peninsula with us year-round. When the first settlers decided this was a good place to subdivide and create estates, Kurilpa – place of the water rats – was a boggy marsh intersected with high ground, criss-crossed with creeks and streams – a rainforest mixed with wetlands, teaming with food. A quick glance at a council overland flow flood map reveals this.
This wetland paradise was where the ibis would have spent their days – using their extremely sensitive bill to probe the mud for worms and grubs, weaving stick nests close to the ground within the security of the reedy marsh and raising their young in small, tight-knit colonies. Although we have radically changed the landscape, these birds have decided to stick it out with us and have swapped their wetland homes for nests in palm trees (find one on Montague Road near QBCC) and their grubs and worms for any food they can find.
Adaptable! Yes, and also innovative: the White Ibis is one of the few birds that has managed to make a meal of the pesky cane toad. It has devised a two-step process – evidencing cause and effect reasoning – that involves beating the toad to death by whacking it on a hard surface to release its toxin and then rinsing the dead amphibian in a puddle or a pond to wash away the poison. Finally, it flips the toad, pierces its stomach and devours the delicate meat inside.
Bin chicken? No! Ultimate, flexible scavenger and survivor.
For more information: https://aussiebirdcount.org.au
Photo credit: (c) Andrew Silcocks
Bird Nerd
