Todas as espécies › Pelicans, herons and ibises

Pelicans, herons and ibises | Pelecaniformes

Pelikaanachtigen | Pelicans, herons and ibises | 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. In this guide it comprises 39 species in three families: pelicans, herons and bitterns, and ibises and spoonbills. What they do share: they are 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 mangroves, on islets in lagoons and estuaries or, like Peruvian Pelican along the Humboldt Current, on bare rocky islands offshore; they usually lay two to five eggs, and both parents incubate. In the interior such colonies are often short-lived and shift with the water level. The young hatch naked and helpless and are fed on regurgitated food for weeks or months.

Famílias desta ordem

Ibises and spoonbills | Threskiornithidae12 espéciesThese 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 | Pelecanidae3 espéciesAll 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 water drains away along the edges of the bill and the fish is swallowed at once. The Brown and Peruvian Pelicans take their fish by plunge-diving from the air, air sacs beneath the skin cushioning the impact and then keeping the body riding high; the American White Pelican, only a vagrant here, fishes while swimming, groups driving fish together in the shallows. On very long broad wings they glide in lines low over the waves or soar on the updraft along the cliffs. Along the Humboldt Current the Peruvian Pelican breeds packed close together in colonies on the guano islands and the desert coast; they lay two or three chalky white eggs that are incubated on top of the webbed feet, and the young hatch naked.
Herons, egrets and bitterns | Ardeidae24 espéciesThe 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.