The Wood Ibis 



Nesting. — Does not breed in California. Nests in colonies; platform of sticks 

 lined with moss placed in tops of bushes or high in trees. Eggs: 2 or 3; roughened, 

 elongate ovate, or elliptical oval; white or, rarely, smeared with tawny olive or olive 

 lake. Av. size 66.1 x 45.1 (2.60 x 1.77); index 68. Season: c. April 1st (Florida). 



General Range. — Warm temperate and tropical America from the western 

 border states, the Ohio Valley (formerly), and South Carolina, south to Argentina and 

 Uruguay. Casually north to Montana, Wisconsin, New York, and Vermont. 



Occurrence in California. — A summer visitor, of regular occurrence in the 

 Colorado River Valley, irregular and rare in the San Diegan district, casually to San 

 Francisco Bay, "San Joaquin Valley" (Cooper), Fresno (Tyler), and Yermo, Mohave 

 Desert, — all probably wanderers from the South at the close of the southern breeding 

 season. 



Authorities. — Baird {Tantalus locnlator), Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv., vol. ix., 1858, 

 p. 682 (Colo. R.); Cones, Birds of the Northwest, 1874, p. 513 (syn., desc, habits, 

 etc.; Colo. R.);Law, Condor, vol. xiv., 1912, p. 41 (Long Beach, feeding habits, etc.); 

 Cooke, U. S. Dept. Agric, Biol. Surv. Bull., no. 45, 1913. p. 22, map (distr. and migr.); 

 Grinnell, Bryant, and Storer, Game Birds Calif., 1918, p. 266 (desc, occurrence, habits, 

 etc.); Howell, Condor, vol. xxii., 1920, p. 75 (Imperial Valley, winter). 



OF THE GREAT family of Storks, rich in species, and so familiar 

 to our Old World friends, there are only three representatives in the 

 New World. These have their center of dispersion in South America. 

 One, the Maguari Stork (Euxenura maguari), is confined to that conti- 

 nent; the Jabiru (Jabirii mycteria) has occurred as far north as central 

 Texas; while the third species, the Wood Ibis, has been long established 

 as a resident in the Gulf States and in Mexico. This last-named species 

 is not supposed to breed nearer our borders than some unknown point 

 in western Mexico; but it indulges a propensity, common to several 

 related families of the "stork-like birds," of taking a summer vacation 

 in the North at the close of the breeding season. It occurs, therefore, 

 regularly in summer about the lagoons and overflow areas of the lower 

 Colorado Valley, and adventures occasionally, wherever standing water 

 is found, into southern California. A notable invasion of the Los Angeles 

 sloughs occurred in the summer of 191 1, when as many as twenty-five 

 birds were seen in a single flock. Dr. Cooper records their appearance 

 at Saticoy in June, 1872, and 1873, and says: 1 "They doubtless breed 

 in San Joaquin Valley [Erroneous, of course; Dr. Cooper was often very 

 naive in his guesses as to breeding habits], as some are shot there every 

 year. After leaving the nest the broods of young wander, and I have 

 several times seen them flying at midday in wide circles high over 

 San Francisco Bay. . . . One was shot some years since at San Leandro 

 near Haywards, having incautiously lighted on a shade tree by the road- 

 side; and these young birds always seem destitute of that natural fear of 

 man so necessary to their safety." 



'Auk. Vol. IV.. 1887, p. 90. 



1923 



