From Birding HQ, Kenn and Kim write: Now we’re on the eighth day of our bird puzzle, and almost the whole creature is now visible. Unless the bird is holding a sign in the tip of its bill that reads, "Hi, I’m a _____ ______," we’re seeing about as much as we’re going to see. So this is the point where the game contestant says: "I’d like to buy a fowl."
And we fill in the last remaining pieces.
So it’s a bird wading in a marshy area at the edge of water. Its feathers are mostly brown and white, which is not a special combination. But the shape of the bird is very distinctive: horizontal body, long legs, long neck, small rounded head, curved bill that’s thick at the base. What’s more, the legs and bill have a strong pink cast. There’s only one common North American bird that could look like this: an immature White Ibis (Eudocimus albus). The adult is white with black wingtips and with bright red bill and legs, but the young bird is bit less flashy. We photographed this young White Ibis on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in October 2006.
Give yourself extra points, incidentally, if you wondered about the possibility of a young Scarlet Ibis (Eudocimus ruber). That spectacular South American bird can look very similar to White Ibis in its younger stages. But we mentioned a few days ago that our quiz bird was of a species that's common in North America.
If you’ve been following along, we appreciate it, and we hope you’ve enjoyed the challenge of this bird puzzle. And if you haven’t, well, please write and tell us about that, too. We’ll see your comments when we get back to the USA in late January.
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