Chicks have bluish-gray down covering their bodies and a lighter colored bill. This includes incubating and turning eggs, and cooling them with water they bring to the nest in their large bills. Females lay an average of two eggs at the end of the rainy season.Īs co-parents, both birds tend to the eggs and young. Breeding pairs build nests on water or on floating vegetation, and can be up to eight feet wide. These birds are very solitary in nature, though, and even mating pairs will feed at opposite sides of their territory. Shoebills reach maturity at three to four years old, and breeding pairs are monogamous. That death stare will haunt you in your dreams. But you might not want to look at them too closely. Lungfish, everywhere! Let’s work on appreciating these feathered monsters, and let them do their mud-eating, decapitating thing.
Young crocodiles would be everywhere! Eels! Monitor lizards! Our children and grandchildren would be overwhelmed. They crap on their own legs because it keeps them cool. As with other birds, the poop is mostly liquid, and heat from warm blood passing through the legs is used to evaporate the liquid waste, resulting in cooler blood circulating through the stork. The science is fascinating, but when you get right down to it, this already mean-looking bird with a huge, clattering death bill now also has poop legs.īeastly and terrifying though they are, it would be a real shame to have a world without Shoebills. (Why would I even be writing these words if not to lull you into a false sense of terror completion?) Are you ready for it? They crap on their legs. Arabs reportedly called the bird Abu-Markhub, or “father of a slipper” (just can’t get away from that shoe imagery).ĭucks are one of the favourite meals of Shoebill storks.īy now we must have hit all the things that are scary about the Shoebill, you must be saying. They appear in the artwork of the ancient Egyptians. Shoebills have been a beloved species for a long time. Sound terrifying? Yeah, it is. But it’s also impossible not to be impressed by these giants.
When there’s nothing but lungfish or crocodile left, the Shoebill will give it a quick decapitation with the sharp edges of the bill (because of course it does) and swallow away. Clamping down on its prey, the bird will start to swing its massive head back and forth, tipping out whatever stuff it doesn’t want to eat. Then the bird will pounce forward, all five feet of it, with its massive bill wide open, engulfing its target along with water, mud, vegetation, and probably any other hapless fish minding their own business. The Shoebill will stand there, motionless as a statue, and wait for some poor lungfish or baby crocodile to swim by. This prehistoric bird doesn’t care how big or dangerous it’s prey is.Īnd they hunt like total bosses of the swamp.
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