Shoebill Stork Facts 👉 Dinosaur Bird! AMAZING!

#shoebill #shoebillstork #dinosaurbird #africanshoebill #whaleheadedstork

Apology! wrong pronunciation of Tanzania - Woops!

Deep in the remote, dense swamps of Africa lives an unusual bird with a shoe for a face. The Shoebill stork looks more like something out of a fantasy novel. this rare bird might very well have walked out of the dinosaur era, just as it is.

Anatomy

Shoebills stand about 115 cm (3.8 feet) tall.
They are entirely gray, with broad wings and long legs.
The head is large in proportion to the body, and the eyes are also exceptionally large.
They have an eight-foot wingspan
The species is named for its clog-shaped bill, which is an adaptation for catching and holding the large, slippery lungfish.
Its big, bulbous bill serves many purposes - its a handy container for fish prey, as well as water to douse its eggs or chicks. Shoebills are large-bodied, sturdy animals.
A soothing combination of blue-gray, dark gray, and slate color make up most of its plumage.
They have soft, doe-like blue eyes,a genetic mutation found in certain populations. The eys are very piercing and are yeloowish or greyish white.
Its unusual large, splotchy bill has sharp edges, which help in the swift decapitation of prey, and also in separating out vegetation that may have been collected with the fish.
The shoebill’s wings are well suited for soaring; they are strong enough to enable the bird to lift off near vertically. Like herons and pelicans, shoebills fly with the head held back against the body.
It has long legs and long toes, which also help it traverse sodden, marshy habitats.
They also have long, thin legs with large feet that are ideal for walking on the vegetation in the freshwater marshes and swamps.
Behaviour

Feeding

Shoebills are diurnal, and only occasionally hunt at night if the moonlight is bright enough. While it may perch or roost in trees, it is more often in or near water. It spends a great deal of time motionless!
It tends to be slow-moving, except in the moment of collapsing on its prey with lightning speed. Though they’re mainly silent, shoebills sometimes engage in bill-clattering, a sound made as a greeting and during nesting. They claps the mandibles of its bill together as a display, producing a loud, hollow sound.
The Shoebill storks are not known to be aggressive towards humans

Shoebills are “stand-and-wait” or “wade-and-walk-slowly” hunters. The shoebill holds its bill vertically downward, out of the way of its binocular vision. When a food item is spotted, the shoebill jerks its head forward, lunging full speed ahead, lurching into the water to engulf the fish with its bill.

Its “collapsing” fishing technique is not effective in deep water, so this bird sticks to the shallows, mostly. Waters with low oxygen content are favored hangouts, as fish need to surface more often.
The Shoebill is no vegetarian. In fact, it is a formidable carnivore. Lungfish, catfish, and tilapia are common food items, as well as water snakes, frogs, monitor lizards, and young turtles. Less common are young water birds and crocodiles.
Conservation

Habitat

This Shoebill Stork is endemic to swamps and wetlands of Central and East Africa. They inhabit swampy regions in and around the White Nile area of northeastern Africa. They stake out overspill areas, where water is moving slowly past toward lakes, carrying with it lots of fish. In Uganda, they are found along marshy edges of lakes, in areas grown over with reeds, papyrus, and grasses, for cover and nest material. They are Distributed across Uganda, Rwanda, Western Tanzania and Zambia.

Conservation

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimates that there are only between 3,300 and 5,300 adult shoebills left in the world, and the population is going down.
As land is cleared for pasture, habitat loss is a major threat, and sometimes cattle will trample on nests. Agricultural burning and pollution from the oil industry and tanneries also affect their habitats. Shoebills are hunted as food in some places, and in others, they're hunted because they’re considered a bad omen.

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