{"id":25778,"date":"2014-08-11T05:32:14","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T11:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=25778"},"modified":"2014-08-11T05:32:14","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T11:32:14","slug":"fighting-white-faced-ibises-11-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/11\/fighting-white-faced-ibises-11-images\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting White-faced Ibises (11 images)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Generally the White-faced Ibis is\u00a0non-aggressive as it feeds in large groups of its own kind.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Even when they accidentally bump into each other there is usually no\u00a0aggressive response.\u00a0 But there are exceptions…<\/p>\n

All images are presented in the order they were taken.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"white-faced<\/p>\n

Eight days ago while I was photographing a variety of feeding\u00a0shorebirds at Glover Pond a brief altercation broke out between these two ibises (note: both “ibis” and “ibises” are accepted plural forms of the word).<\/p>\n

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After a brief aerial spat one bird dipped its bill into the water in the direction of the other ibis…<\/p>\n

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and then the second bird responded in kind and I thought it was over.\u00a0 It wasn’t.<\/p>\n

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A few moments later they went at it again (I believe it was the same two birds but I’m not sure as there were others feeding in the area).<\/p>\n

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Much of the combat was aerial and though I noticed little actual physical contact…<\/p>\n

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the action sometimes resembled a form of pugilistic ballet.<\/p>\n

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This second bout lasted quite a while – long enough that I had to nurse my camera buffer and even then it filled several times so I’m sure I missed some interesting shots as a result.<\/p>\n

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The fight seemed like more bark than bite as there were lots of threatening wing positions and other apparent ritualized behaviors but I didn’t notice any stabbing or biting with their beaks.<\/p>\n

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“Getting air” seemed to be an important part of the display.\u00a0 Sometimes it was done individually…<\/p>\n

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and other times it was simultaneous with both birds.<\/p>\n

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Eventually the ibis on the left conceded defeat and vacated the area.<\/p>\n

These birds usually feed communally in large groups and I seldom\u00a0notice any significant\u00a0tension between them which is quite a contrast with herons and egrets that invade each others feeding space.\u00a0 As a result this particular fracas took me by surprise and I was lucky to get as many images of it as I did.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Generally the White-faced Ibis is non-aggressive as it feeds in large groups of its own kind. Even when they accidentally bump into each other there is usually no aggressive response. But there are exceptions…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,394,972],"tags":[25,415,2156,631,140,877,973,311,715],"class_list":["post-25778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-white-faced-ibis-wading-birds","tag-aggression","tag-agonistic-behavior","tag-bill-dipping","tag-buffer","tag-fighting","tag-glover-pond","tag-plegadis-chihi","tag-utah-2","tag-white-faced-ibis"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/white-faced-ibis-7121-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6HM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}