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American White Ibis | Eudocimus albus
Witte ibis | Ibis blanco
The American White Ibis is a white, medium-sized ibis with a red, downcurved bill and red legs. It lives in groups in the mangroves, marshes and rice fields of the Greater Antilles, and is most numerous in Cuba, where it is called coco blanco. It is the closest relative of the Scarlet Ibis; where the two meet, hybrids occur.
Voice
A hoarse, nasal hunk-hunk-hunk, mainly in flight and when disturbed; grunting sounds at the roost and the colony.
Recording: Daniel Parker — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
53–70 cm, with a long, curved bill and fairly long legs; males are larger and longer-billed than females. Adults are entirely white apart from the inky black tips of the outer primaries, mainly visible in flight. The bare face, bill and legs are reddish orange; in the breeding season they become a deeper red to pink and the bill gains a dark tip. Juveniles are brown on the head, neck and upperparts, with a streaked neck and a white rump and belly; the bill is then pinkish orange. They become white over about two years. It flies with the neck outstretched, in lines or V-formations, on rapid beats alternating with glides.
Confusion species
Young Scarlet Ibises Eudocimus ruber are practically indistinguishable from young American White Ibises; outside Trinidad a young Eudocimus is almost always a White Ibis. Orange or white-and-red birds may be hybrids. White herons, such as Great Egret Ardea alba and Snowy Egret Egretta thula, have a straight bill and fly with the neck retracted. Wood Stork Mycteria americana is much larger, with a dark bare head, a thick bill and much black in the wing. Young White Ibises resemble Glossy Ibis Plegadis falcinellus, but have a white belly and rump.
Habitat
Mangroves, tidal mud, shallow lagoons, freshwater marshes, rice fields, flooded pasture and ditches; also on short grass. It feeds in groups by probing mud or shallow water with the bill for crabs, crayfish, insects and other small animals. It roosts and breeds in colonies in mangroves or scrub over water, often with herons.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Resident and common in Cuba and the Isla de la Juventud; locally resident in Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Jamaica, and in smaller numbers on some islands of the Bahamas. An irregular visitor to the Cayman Islands; rare in Puerto Rico. A vagrant to the Virgin Islands, the Lesser Antilles and Trinidad and Tobago. Outside the region along the coasts of the south-eastern United States, in Mexico and Central America, and in northern South America to Colombia and Venezuela.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Cuba in the rice fields and marshes of the Zapata Peninsula and along the coast of Camagüey; in Jamaica in the Black River marshes. In the late afternoon groups fly in long lines to the roosts in the mangroves.
Conservation status
Not threatened. In the Antilles the species is hunted locally for food, and habitat is lost through the draining of marshes and the clearing of mangroves. Rice fields offer new feeding grounds there.
Scientific name
Eudocimus albus | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Scolopax alba; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Eudocimus was introduced in 1832 by Wagler. Eudocimus is Greek, from eudokimos 'glorious, esteemed' (eu 'good' and dokimos 'excellent'). albus is Latin for 'white', after the white plumage of the adult. The specimen the first description was based on came from Carolina (United States).