African sacred ibis

African sacred ibis

Foraging in Mida Creek mud flats, Kenya
Conservation status
Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)^[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Pelecaniformes
Family:	Threskiornithidae
Subfamily:	Threskiornithinae
Genus:	Threskiornis
Species:	T. aethiopicus
Binomial name
*Threskiornis aethiopicus* (Latham, 1790)

Range of T. aethiopicus

The African sacred ibis (Threskiornis aethiopicus) is a species of ibis. Its sister species is the Australian white ibis.

Description

An adult individual is 68 cm (27 in) long with all-white body plumage apart from dark plumes on the rump. The bald head and neck, thick curved bill and legs are black. The white wings show a black rear border in flight. Sexes are similar, but juveniles have dirty white plumage, a smaller bill and some feathering on the neck.

Flying in South Africa

This bird is usually silent, but occasionally makes some croaking noises, unlike its vocal relative, the Hadada ibis.

Habitat and distribution

A wading bird of the ibis family, Threskiornithidae, the sacred ibis breeds in Sub-Saharan Africa, southeastern Iraq, and formerly in Egypt, where it was venerated and often mummified as a symbol of the god Thoth. The African sacred ibis occurs in marshy wetlands and mud flats, both inland and on the coast. It will also visit cultivation and rubbish dumps.

Reproduction

Young sacred ibis in Tanzania

The bird nests in tree colonies, often with other large wading birds such as herons. It builds a stick nest, often in a baobab tree and lays two or three eggs.

Diet

It feeds on various fish, frogs, small mammals, reptiles and smaller birds as well as insects. It may also probe into the soil with its long bill for invertebrates such as earthworms.

As an introduced species

The African sacred ibis has been introduced into France, Italy, Spain, Taiwan, and the United States (south Florida).

The introduced and rapidly growing populations in southern Europe are seen as a potential problem, since these large predators can devastate breeding colonies of species such as terns. They also compete successfully for nest sites with cattle and little egrets. The adaptable ibises supplement their diet by feeding at rubbish tips, which helps them to survive the winter in these temperate regions.

Conservation

The African sacred ibis is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.

In myth and legend

Copenhagen Museum

Wooden body with copper-bronze parts, Ptolemaic period, 330–304 BC

Venerated and often mummified by Ancient Egyptians as a symbol of the god Thoth, the ibis was, according to Herodotus and Pliny the Elder, also invoked against incursions of winged serpents. Herodotus wrote:

There is a region moreover in Arabia, situated nearly over against the city of Buto, to which place I came to inquire about the winged serpents: and when I came thither I saw bones of serpents and spines in quantity so great that it is impossible to make report of the number, and there were heaps of spines, some heaps large and others less large and others smaller still than these, and these heaps were many in number.
The region in which the spines are scattered upon the ground is of the nature of an entrance from a narrow mountain pass to a great plain, which plain adjoins the plain of Egypt; and the story goes that at the beginning of spring winged serpents from Arabia fly towards Egypt, and the birds called ibises meet them at the entrance of this country and do not suffer the serpents to go by but kill them. On account of this deed it is (say the Arabians) that the ibis has come to be greatly honored by the Egyptians, and the Egyptians also agree that it is for this reason that they honor these birds.

In more mythical stories, it was also said that the flies that brought pestilence died immediately upon propitiatory sacrifices of this bird.^[2]