{"id":9102,"date":"2012-11-13T16:36:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-13T23:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=9102"},"modified":"2012-11-13T18:34:26","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T01:34:26","slug":"an-amazingly-resilient-one-legged-ibis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/13\/an-amazingly-resilient-one-legged-ibis\/","title":{"rendered":"An Amazingly Resilient One-legged Ibis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I came across this one-legged White-faced Ibis at Farmingtom Bay.\u00a0 Normally, these birds feed by slowly wading through the water and locating their invertebrate prey by tactile probing of the muddy substrate.\u00a0 Their long, recurved and extremely sensitive bill is an ideal tool for this purpose.<\/p>\n

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But this bird, of course, is unable to wade.\u00a0 So it would stand in one spot for a few seconds while feeding and then jump to the next spot with great effort.<\/p>\n

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The problem it had with this method was maintaining balance as it was landing in the new spot, since it couldn’t put down the missing leg for support.<\/p>\n

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So,\u00a0 as it landed it would use that long bill as a sort of substitute for the missing leg and foot, thus gaining an additional balancing and support point in the mud.<\/p>\n

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Here it has just regained balance and is closing its wings and pulling its long bill off of the mud.<\/p>\n

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Perhaps what the bird was doing can be\u00a0better visualised from this one photo, where you can tell from the turbulence around the right leg that the ibis has just landed in this spot a split second before and that it is using its long bill to brace itself in order to regain balance.<\/p>\n

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And here I caught the ibis just as it was “landing” on a new feeding spot – the water is actually fairly deep here.<\/p>\n

I hope\u00a0this post isn’t seen as much ado about nothing, since one-legged birds and their struggles aren’t particularly\u00a0uncommon.\u00a0 But I was much impressed with the resilience and adaptability of this bird under very trying circumstances.\u00a0 The ibis looked and acted healthy and vigorous and the leg seems to have healed nicely.<\/p>\n

That said, I don’t have\u00a0high expectations for the long-term survival of this bird.\u00a0 While I watched it struggle to feed, what\u00a0kept going through my mind was “that’s a whole lot of effort for a small return in food”.\u00a0 After all, survival is an energy game that can only be won if more energy is gained than is lost in its pursuit.\u00a0\u00a0 And the amount of energy expended\u00a0each time this bird jumped out of the water, flapping it’s wings\u00a0in the effort and then trying to regain its balance was very high.<\/p>\n

I hope I’m wrong…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Last week I came across this one-legged White-faced Ibis at Farmingtom Bay.\u00a0 Normally, these birds feed by slowly wading through the water and locating their invertebrate prey by tactile probing of the muddy substrate.\u00a0 Their long, recurved and extremely sensitive bill is an ideal tool for this purpose.   But this bird, of course, is unable to wade.\u00a0 So it would stand in one spot for a few seconds while feeding and then jump to the next spot with great effort.     The problem it had with this method was maintaining balance as it was landing in the new spot, since it couldn’t put down the missing leg for support.     So,\u00a0 as it landed it would use that long bill as a sort of substitute for the missing leg and foot, thus gaining an additional balancing and support point in the mud.     Here it has just regained balance and is closing its wings and pulling its long bill off of the mud.     Perhaps what the bird was doing can be\u00a0better visualised from this one photo, where you can tell from the turbulence around the right leg that the ibis has just landed in this spot a split second before and that it is using its long bill to brace itself in order to regain balance.     And here I caught the ibis just as it was “landing” on a new feeding spot – the water is actually fairly deep here. I hope\u00a0this post isn’t seen as much…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,334,392,972],"tags":[975,134,136,974,973,715],"class_list":["post-9102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-white-faced-ibis-wading-birds","tag-adaptive-behavior","tag-farmington-bay-wildlife-management-area","tag-feeding","tag-one-legged","tag-plegadis-chihi","tag-white-faced-ibis"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-2mO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9102","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=9102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}