White Ibis: Wetland Wanderer

Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. First Printing . Hard Back. Near Fine/Very Good. 6" x 9. 242 Pages Indexed. Bibliography. Green boards with brown quarter-spine and silver lettering. Distinguished from other wading birds by their long, downwardly curved bills, ibises have been an object of human fascinaiton since priests first offered the mummified remains of sacred ibises to the gods of ancient Egypt. Today, North American populations of White Ibises rank as one of the continent's most abundant colonially nesting wading birds, with most found in coastal North and South Caroline, Georgia, Louisiana, and Florida. Bildstein explores the critical ecologoical relationships between White Ibises and the wetlands they inhabit --- and reveals a discovery crucial to the birds' survival. He determined that when ibises were raising their young, parents often traveled as much as 25 miles inland to feed on fresh-water crayfish. Puzzled by their choice of distant inland feeding sites, he discovered that because salt toxicity prevents nestlings from developing normally on brackish-water prey, young ibises require fresh-water prey to survive. He found that coastal populaitons of White Ibises need both a coastal bedroom and and inland kitchen to survive. Porotecting their more conspicuous coastal bedrooms will mean little if the less consipicuous inland kitchens are destroyed by human development. Bildstein closes with an account of Trinidad's failure to protect its Scarlet Ibis and an analysis of the devastating effects fo Hurricane Hugo on South Carolina's White Ibises. A Smithsonian Nature Book.