Howdy friends.  This week’s bird is the shoebill or shoebill stork.  This vaguely threatening looking bird was long thought to be related to storks on account of how it really looks like one, but genetic testing recently revealed it is more closely related to pelicans and herons.  It lives in large, dense swamps in east Africa between South Sudan and Zambia.  During the Holocene era, around 11,700 years ago, it lived in the swamps where the Sahara desert now sits.  These birds are large, standing up to five feet tall, and weigh 11 or 12 pounds.  Aren’t birds wild?  Something that big weighing that little really puts into perspective how their bodies are arranged to save weight and facilitate flight.  Despite this, Shoebills rarely fly long distances, and they most commonly fly the 20m (66ft) they like to be spaced apart while foraging.  Even when flushed out by humans and theoretically fleeing for their lives, they tend not to fly more than 100 to 500m (330 to 1,640ft).  

Shoebills mainly eat fish, although they will eat a variety of available prey including juvenile crocodiles.  They are ambush predators, and are notorious for their ability to stand motionless waiting for prey to blunder by.  They hunt using their eyes, unlike similar birds which depend on their sense of touch.  They may benefit from nearby hippopotomoi, who stir up fish and make them easier to catch.  Their large and very sharp bill, the third longest in the animal kingdom, allows them to hunt larger prey than other wading birds.  They prefer lungfish and catfish and their geographical distribution tends to map to where lungfish and papyrus plants can be found.  Shoebills prefer dense swamps and marshes, because low amounts of oxygen in the water will force fish to surface to breath, where they can be nabbed.  As previously noted, the birds are solitary and need to be fairly widely spaced in order to hunt effectively.  They do not form flocks.  

Both members of a breeding pair will work to build a nest as a semi-submerged platform made of plant matter.  They will clear out an area 3m (9.8ft) across in a swamp or marsh and then build a nesting platform 1 to 1.7 m (3.3 to 5.6 ft) wide and as many as 3m deep.  Both parents work to feed and shelter the chicks once they hatch.  They also cool the nest and chicks by dumping water on them.  The shoebill will collect a bill full of water and swallow it, then fill its bill again and hold the water there while it returns to the nest.  Once it arrives it will empty its bill on the nest and puke up the initial swallow, allowing it to bring two gulps in one trip.  Similarly, when feeding young, the bird will regurgitate them whole, allowing the young to learn to deal with large prey.  These birds will usually only raise one chick at a time, but hatch more.  The extra siblings are spares in case the first dies or is unfit, the “spares” will not reach adulthood if they are not needed.  

Shoebills number around 5,000-8,000 in total, and face pressure from habitat destruction, farming, and hunting/poaching.

Links: https://tinyurl.com/3hbenvxk, https://tinyurl.com/4uhwh5cv, https://tinyurl.com/2urrm5pe, https://tinyurl.com/3ajw3xfs, https://tinyurl.com/4et4b6ff

 Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoebill

Have a good weekend, PT friends.