STORKS AND WOOD IBISES 



(Family Ciconiidce) 



Wood Ibis 



(Tantalus loculator) 



Called also: WOOD STORK; COLORADO TURKEY; WATER 



TURKEY 



Length — 40 inches. 



Male and Female — Head and neck bare, and bluish or yellowish ; 

 plumage white, except the primaries and secondaries of 

 wings and the tail, which are greenish black. Legs blue, 

 blackish toward the toes; long, thick, decurved bill, dingy 

 yellow. Immature birds have head covered with down; 

 plumage dark gray, with blackish wings and tail, but soon 

 whitening. 



Range — "Southern United States, from the Ohio Valley, Colo- 

 rado, Utah, southeastern California, etc., south to Argentine 

 Republic; casually northward to Pennsylvania and New 

 York."— A. O. U. 



Season — Resident, or summer visitor. 



Like the turkey buzzards, this wood stork has the fascinating 

 grace of flight that one never tires of watching, as the birds, first 

 mounting upward with strong wing beats, go sailing away over- 

 head in great spirals, floating on motionless, wide wings, wheel- 

 ing, gyrating, rising, falling, skimming in and out of the pathless 

 maze that a flock follows as if its members were playing a sedate 

 game of cross tag. With necks distended and legs trailing on a 

 horizontal with their bodies, their length is extreme. As these 

 birds are gluttonous feeders, it has been suggested that their 

 flights, like the buzzard's, are taken for exercise to quicken their 

 digestion. 



There is a tradition to the effect that the wood ibis is a 

 solitary misanthrope, but Audubon mentions thousands in a 

 flock; and while the day of such sights has passed forever in this 

 land of bird butchers, one rarely sees a lone fisherman in the south 



IS5 



