“Hey, you mook,” I hear you saying, “that was last year’s weekly topic. We’re done with that now.” But no, not when we’re greeted with this this morning.
That’s a white ibis, or American white ibis if you prefer (Eudocimus albus,) perched in a tree on the edge of the pond, and while it’s not the first I’ve seen in North Carolina, all the others have been strictly coastal, which that doesn’t exactly describe our locale. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.
I slipped out the door quietly to snag these shots, hoping not to spook it. These are cropped of course, not representing what I could see in the viewfinder, but the behavior certainly wasn’t that of a bird getting ready to flee. Check out that negligent grip with one toe. And the blue eyes, natch.
I came in after getting enough detailed frames, intending to let the ibis feel comfortable and pondering (only in idle amusement) what to feed it to keep it around. The ibis had that well in hand, though, and dropped down into the yard on the edge of The Bay and began poking around, so back out I went. It was snowing very gently while this was happening, not enough to count really.
For those of you keeping track at home, The Bay is a small semi-circle of the pond edge to the right of the ‘apron’ where the ducks and geese and nutrias and beavers all come up to get corn, actually a little closer to the house than the apron but usually half-glutted with pond plants throughout the summer. [We have to use these terms to communicate what’s going on or where to spot some particular critter, so we’ve developed a collection of geographical terms for the property features.] I was unconvinced that the ibis would find anything to eat there at this time of year, but I’m not an ibis nor conversant enough with their habits, it seems.
That long beak evolved to poke through the mud in search of small crustaceans and shellfish, thus the coastal habits, and not something that it’s going to find here. Nonetheless, it came up with something that it juggled for a little bit, and I kept firing away.
What I took, from my view through the viewfinder (and a 600mm focal length,) to be a cluster of roots or debris looks, on close inspection of the frames afterward, suspiciously like a salamander. Let’s go in as close as we can manage:
This is full resolution, the best I was going to achieve in the conditions (or at least, that I’d chance from what I considered a safe distance,) and that still looks like a salamander in its beak. Nor was the ibis inclined to drop it and move on, instead juggling it around until it was in the right position and gulping it down.
[Salamanders would not be the slightest bit active in these conditions, but they would be buried in the mud staying moist and waiting for spring, so this isn’t a farfetched capture at all.]
After what I considered to be enough frames and, again, trying not to frighten it off, I came back inside to unload the memory card and prepare some choices for this post. The Girlfriend soon came down and got me again, because the ibis had moved off to another portion of the yard, one with a better view, and was still foraging.
Now we’re to the left of Duck Island and the apron, a good 15 meters from the previous hunting ground – or at least, the ibis is. I was down in the middle of the backyard, having crept closer while the ibis was intent on the thing it has in its beak here. This is full-frame, to give you an idea of my view at the time. The ibis was playing with something long and floppy, and I was almost convinced that it only had a rotting leaf from a pond plant or something. But we’ll go in closer.
We’re once again at full resolution now, and the intervening plants and stems in the way aren’t helping. Yet, that doesn’t look like a rotting leaf at all, and there weren’t that many pond plants in the immediate vicinity that have would long thin leaves of this nature. The slick two-tone coloration, the faint appearance of what may be ribs, the rounded end, and the thicker apparent shape of the thing in its beak certainly suggest something else, and to my mind, that’s, “eel.”
Now, I don’t recall ever seeing an eel at any time in my history, much less here on the pond itself, and it doesn’t strike me as the habitat for them. But that S-bend is suspicious, and nothing else seems to fit the bill (a ha ha) – the ibis certainly seemed convinced, because it juggled this one too for perhaps two minutes before snorking it down whole, and doing that thing that waders do to settle the food distinctly in their crops. I would have shot video, but video handheld at 600mm would have been nausea-inducing and the resolution is three times as good in still photos anyway.
You can see some swelling in the crop area (mid-neck) here, as the ibis favors me with a condescending look. Okay, probably not, just checking on me to ensure that I’m not up to no good, since I’d crept closer while it was wrestling with the snack. Still, it wasn’t inclined to fly off, and after a few more frames to ensure I had something sharp, I let it be.
Of course, I could have done without the intervening vegetation, but not a bad little portrait for my troubles. Will this guy stick around? I would have been inclined to think this was a once-off encounter, but the ibis also seemed to snag two good meals within a half-hour here, so who knows? We’ll be happy to add it to the denizens if it’s so inclined.