Buff-necked Ibis
Theristicus caudatus
Stocky ibis. Very similar to Black-faced Ibis but no range overlap. Back and wings mostly gray with black belly and contrasting buffy neck and head. Long decurved bill and pink legs. Usually found in pairs or small groups, in open habitats like pastures and savannas. Often far from water, unlike most other ibis.
Identification
It has a total length of approximately 75 centimetres (30 in). The neck is buffish, the upperparts are grey, the belly and flight feathers are black, and there is a large white patch in the wings. In flight, where the relatively short legs do not extend beyond the tail (unlike e.g. Eudocimus and Plegadis), the white patch forms a broad white band on the upperwing that separates the black remiges and the grey lesser wing-coverts. The bill and bare skin around the eyes are blackish and the legs are red.
Taxonomy
The buff-necked ibis was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1781 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux based on a specimen collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Scolopax caudatus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The buff-necked ibis is now placed in the genus Theristicus that was erected by the German naturalist Johann Georg Wagler in 1832. The name of the genus is from the Ancient Greek theristikos meaning "of reaping"; the specific epithet is from the Latin caudatus meaning "tailed".<p>Two subspecies are recognised:
- Scientific name
- Theristicus caudatus
- Authority
- (Boddaert, 1783)
- Order
- Pelecaniformes
- Family
- Threskiornithidae
- Genus
- Theristicus
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
Its diet consists mainly of insects, spiders, frogs, reptiles, snails, invertebrates and small mammals found in soft soils. The female usually lays two to four eggs in a platform nest, made from twigs and branches, in a tree.
Conservation
- Population trend
- stable
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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