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hi :) have you ever posted the japanese crested ibis/toki?

I have not, here's one for you..

Crested Ibis (Nipponia nippon), family Threskiornithidae, order Pelicaniformes

ENDANGERED.

Once found in Japan, Korea, China, and the Russian Far East. The only natural population is found in Shaanxi, China. Introduced populations occur elsewhere.

photographs by Xinhua & Khalid Sharif

#ibis #wading bird #bird #ornithology #nipponia #threskiornithidae #pelicaniformes #asia #animals #nature

[2765/11080] Crested ibis - Nipponia nippon

Also known as: Toki

Order: Pelecaniformes Family: Threskiornithidae (ibises and spoonbills)

Photo credit: Peng Su via Macaulay Library

#birds #Crested ibis #Pelecaniformes #Threskiornithidae #Nipponia #birds a to z #Toki #undescribed

Nipponia nippon

By Daniel in Blue, CC BY-SA 3.0

Etymology: Japanese Crested Ibis

First Described By: Reichenbach, 1850

Classification: Dinosauromorpha, Dinosauriformes, Dracohors, Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoromorpha, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostaylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Neognathae, Neoaves, Aequorlitornithes, Ardeae, Aequornithes, Pelecaniformes, Threskiornithidae, Threskiornithinae

Status: Extant, Endangered

Time and Place: Within the last 10,000 years, in the Holocene of the Quaternary

The Crested Ibis is known from isolated locations in China and Japan

Physical Description: The Crested Ibis, being an Ibis, has a long body, a long neck, long stilt legs, a small head, and a ridiculously long, curved crest, that are distinctive for this group. The Crested Ibis is distinct from other ibises by having a bushy crest on the back of its head, leading to its name. They have red heads, grey necks and backs, and white bellies. Their legs are red as well, while their beaks are dark black. They range from 55 to 84 centimeters in length, about the length of a golden retriever. The males and females do not look different from one another.

Diet: The Crested Ibis primarily feeds on small animals, especially fish, amphibians, and crustaceans, as well as a lot of eels.

Behavior: The Crested Ibis is mainly diurnal, utilizing the daylight hours to forage in small flocks in mud and shallow water. They use their bills to probe for food within the mud and water, and they’ll also go digging in grasses. Over fifty birds have been recorded foraging together.

This bird starts breeding in Late February through early March, with eggs laid from March through April. They form monogamous, breeding pairs, with both members of the couple working on making the nest, tending the eggs, and feeding the young. They lay their eggs in isolated nests, though back in the day they’d do so in colonies. They make their nests out of large, flimsy sticks that are lined with twigs, leaves, and hay. These nests are built in tree branches, usually very high up and very far away from humans, near where food can be found. They lay about 3 eggs, on average, with more eggs laid when more food is available. The chicks hatch after a month and are very fluffy and grey. They will fledge after about two months, and become independent nearer to three months. The parents feed the young by regurgitating into their mouths.

By Hisagi, CC BY-SA 3.0

These birds are not migratory, though they do move between breeding areas and feeding areas over twenty kilometers. They will disperse as family groups more and more south over time, but do not return north after moving. They make “aaa” calls, and rarely, making them fairly nonvocal birds.

Ecosystem: The Crested Ibis lives mainly in marshes, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, rice fields, and the like, usually those found in valleys near large clumps of trees. Chicks are often fed on snakes, weasels, and martens, while the adults are more at risk from larger mammals.

Other: The Crested Ibis used to have a much larger range, but has steadily been declining in population due to habitat loss, small original population loss, limited range, winter starvation, and hunting. The species came to the brink of extinction, with only one population remaining in China. Since then, conservation efforts have been heavily ongoing both in and out of zoos, with the birds reintroduced into Japan in 2008. Eggs have been hatched in Japan and the conservation efforts seem to b e succeeding, but such a rapid drop in population will limit the gene pool of the species going forward in a bottleneck event.

~ By Meig Dickson

Sources under the Cut

Trip to Japan!

After a good rest, we set off to Japan! Sakura Promenade is the first environment in the game rebuilt into the style of the Japanese city. The great project called "Nipponia" is the reconstruction of most cities in The Sims 4.

DOWNLOAD: http://www.simtopia.pl/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=49

Endangered ibises benefit from joining egret flocks

Birds benefit from flocking together—even when they're not of a feather. According to a new study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, China's endangered Crested Ibises benefit from joining forces with other, more visually-oriented bird species while searching for food.

Joining mixed-species flocks can reduce birds' risk of predation while boosting their foraging opportunities, but it can also expose them to competition and disease, and little research has been done on what this means for birds such as ibises that rely on their sense of touch to find food. Yuanxing Ye and Changqing Ding of the Beijing Forestry University and their colleagues studied the behavior of Crested Ibises foraging with and without Little Egrets in central China's Shaanxi Province, recording the birds' behavior with a digital video camera to determine whether they picked up on social cues from the other species. They found that ibises in mixed-species flocks became alert to threats sooner, suggesting they felt less at risk when mingling with the more visually-oriented egrets.

Crested Ibises were once believed to be extinct in the wild, until seven birds were discovered in a remote area of China in 1981. Ye and his colleagues believe this new information about their foraging behavior could benefit ibis conservation. "Developing habitat conditions that favor mixed-species flocks may reduce the perception of risk by ibises due to the early warning effects of egrets, particularly in habitats with high levels of predation or disturbance," according to Ye.

"Mixed-species flocks are a common occurrence in birds, but little is known about the costs and benefits of joining such groups when species differ in their foraging tactics," adds the University of Montreal's Guy Beauchamp, an expert on group living in birds. "In this case, ibises benefitted from joining another more visually-oriented species in that they detected threats more quickly. This study shows how detailed behavioral observations can help us understand why species forage in groups and also join other species."