All species › Pelicans, herons and ibises
Pelicans, herons and ibises | Pelecaniformes
Pelikaanachtigen | Pelícanos, garzas e ibis
This order is held together mainly by molecular data; outwardly its members differ widely, down to the way they carry the neck in flight. What they do share: they are large birds of shallow water that take fish and other aquatic animals with a heavy, highly specialised bill on a long neck, and they fly on broad wings with slow beats and long glides. They nest in colonies in trees, reedbeds or on islands, usually lay two to five eggs, and both parents incubate. The young hatch naked and helpless and are fed on regurgitated food for weeks or months.
Families in this order
- Ibises and spoonbills | Threskiornithidae4 speciesThese birds feel their food rather than see it. The bill is long and packed with touch receptors: in the ibises it is decurved for probing mud, shallow water and grass tussocks, while in the spoonbills it widens at the tip into a spatula that is swept sideways through the water and snaps shut the moment something touches it. That lets them feed in turbid water and after dark. The face is partly or wholly bare, they fly with the neck outstretched in lines or slanting formations, alternating flapping with gliding, and they nest colonially in trees or reeds, laying two to five eggs whose naked young take food from the parent's throat.
- Pelicans | Pelecanidae2 speciesAll four toes are joined by webbing — heavy birds on short legs that swim exceptionally well. Slung under the lower mandible is an elastic pouch, not a larder but a dip net: the head goes under, the water drains away along the edges of the bill and the fish is swallowed at once, and in shallows groups drive fish together to do it. Air sacs beneath the skin keep the body riding high, and on very long broad wings they soar up on thermals and travel in formation. They breed packed close together in colonies, lay two or three chalky white eggs that are incubated on top of the webbed feet, and the young hatch naked.
- Herons and bitterns | Ardeidae13 speciesThe middle of the neck is built of shortened vertebrae, so the neck folds into a Z and can shoot forward in one movement, with the straight, pointed bill working as a spear or a pair of forceps. They hunt standing or walking slowly in shallow water for fish, amphibians, insects and small mammals, and they are the only long-legged waders that fly with the neck drawn back between the shoulders and the legs trailing past the tail. Patches of powder down on the breast and flanks crumble continuously; using the comb-like serrated claw of the middle toe they work that powder through the plumage to bind slime and fish oil. The nest is a platform of sticks or reeds, usually in a colony, and three to six eggs are laid with incubation starting from the first, so the chicks hatch a day or two apart and differ sharply in size.