Journal of a Sabbatical

May 2, 1999

glossy ibis

May 2, 1999

Providence
2 cardinals (m+f)

Plum Island
3 redwinged blackbirds
2 northern mockingbirds
2 gadwalls
2 greater yellowlegs
1 great egret
5 glossy ibises
2 snowy egrets

Reading: The Adventure of Birds by Charlton Ogburn

I drove down to Providence after the festivities at Kevin's house yesterday so I could spend the night with Nancy. We went out to dinner at the Garden Grille in Pawtucket, checked on the nesting domestic goose at the cove, and drove to Bristol to see if the swan pair whose nest at the mouth of Silver Creek got washed away last year have chosen the same site again. They haven't.

I woke Nancy in the night to read her a particularly wonderful passage from The Adventure of Birds by Charlton Ogburn.

Nancy's social worker support group was meeting early today for a picnic on the beach. They picked her up at 11:00 and I headed home.

I couldn't just stay home once I got there, so after some quality time with Wilbur, I went to Plum Island. After all, May is migration month. And I lucked out.

I finally saw a glossy ibis on the refuge. Five of them in fact. People have been telling me they've seen glossy ibises there for like two weeks now but I could never manage to find them. I didn't even have to look hard for these guys today though. I was driving south along the refuge road after having found disappointingly few birds at the salt pannes (where is that female Wilson's phalarope I keep hearing about?) when I spotted a snowy egret and a glossy ibis in the marsh close enough to the road that I could tell immediately what they were. I pulled over and whipped out the binoculars, which revealed three more glossy ibises in the group with them. Other cars pulled over. Many many other cars.

The last time I saw a traffic jam like this was for a white-eyed vireo. The Harris' sparrow didn't even get this much of a traffic jam but that was because he showed up during the week in the late fall. Today was a perfect spring day and everybody and their brother sister aunts uncles cousins was on the refuge.

The glossy ibis is gorgeous and funny-looking all at the same time. Its plumage is a burgundy/maroon color with a bright green sheen. Its beak curves downward (the official jargon word is "decurved") quite noticeably - that's pretty much a characteristic of ibises in general. One time, Nancy and I saw an ancient Egyptian sculpture of an ibis in a museum and we could tell from across the room what type of bird it was supposed to be by the beak. Looking at these ibisies today I was amazed at how well-observed that Egyptian carving was.

Further down the road, I spotted another glossy ibis with another snowy egret, just the two of them. I've never read anywhere about any particular association between snowy egrets and glossy ibises like the association of American wigeons and hooded mergansers, but I suppose there could be one. With their radically different beak shapes, it would be strange if they both ate the same kinds of prey. Guess I need to read more about their life histories.