The glossy ibis is a dark wading bird with a long, down-curved bill; its chestnut body and wings show a green and purple gloss in good light. It is the world's most widespread ibis, and in North America it is a fairly recent arrival—still rare in Florida as late as the 1930s, it has since spread north along the Atlantic Coast and inland.
Appearance
- Appearance
- 19–26 in (48–66 cm) long with a wingspan of about 31–41 in (80–105 cm). Breeding adults are rich chestnut with green, purple, and bronze gloss on the wings, grayish facial skin edged with thin pale-blue lines, and a dark eye. Nonbreeding adults and young birds are duller, with fine white streaks on the head and neck.
- Voice
- Mostly quiet; gives low grunts and higher bleating notes.
Look-alikes
In breeding season, White-faced has red eyes, red legs, pinkish-red facial skin, and a white feathered border that wraps behind the eye. Glossy has a dark eye, dark gray facial skin, and thin pale-blue lines that do not go behind the eye. Young birds of the two often can't be told apart in the field.
Why they get mixed upVery close relatives with nearly the same dark, glossy plumage; their ranges increasingly overlap, and the two sometimes hybridize.
Where it lives
- Typical habitats
- Freshwater and salt marshes
- Rice fields
- Flooded fields
- Shallow ponds
- Range
- In the U.S., mainly along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Florida and often the Gulf Coast to Louisiana; it spread north during the 20th century. Wandering birds show up far inland and north, especially in spring and summer.
- Seasonal presence
- Birds from the northern part of the breeding range head south in winter, leaving fairly early in fall; southern birds stay year-round.
Behavior
- Diet
- Probes in mud and shallow water for beetle larvae and other aquatic insects, plus crayfish, leeches, snails, crabs, frogs, and small fish. In Florida it eats many small snakes.
- Activity
- Feeds in flocks, wading through shallow water. Flies with neck outstretched, often in lines or V-shaped flocks.
Life cycle
- Nest
- Nests in colonies, often with herons and egrets. Both parents build a bulky platform of sticks and marsh plants in low shrubs or trees over water, sometimes on the ground in marsh grass.
- Clutch size
- Usually 3–4 pale blue or green eggs
- Incubation
- About 21 days
- Fledging
- Young first try to fly at 4–5 weeks and fly well by 6–7 weeks.
Conservation
- IUCN Red List
- LCLeast ConcernLow risk of extinction
- Status
- The North American population grew greatly and pushed north during the 20th century, though numbers in some areas appear to have dipped since the 1970s.
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