[Birdnet] Glossy Ibis in Cache Valley fwd. from David Wheeler

[Mark Stackhouse]

From: David Wheeler <dumpster_42 at yahoo.com>
Date: June 10, 2006 2:13:15 PM MDT
To: birdnet at utahbirds.org
Subject: Glossy Ibis in Cache Valley


Larene & I found a glossy ibis in a pasture about
(very approximately) one third mile west of the
Gossner's Foods cheese factory (which is at 1000 W
1000 N) along 1000 North.  The pasture itself is just
NE of the NE corner of the sewage treatment ponds and
is grazed fairly low.  We saw the bird at about 10:15
this morning.   It had all the main markings (leg
color, dusky blue face skin color, baby blue face
outline--thin and ending at eyes, brown irises...).
It flew off as we approached in a futile effort to
photograph it, and we didn't relocate it (though it
probably just went into the tall marsh plants around a
small stream/ditch on the edge of the field).

It was loosely associated with about 5-8 other ibi,
all of which were clearly White-faced.

We found it critical when observing ibis to position
ourselves so that the light was really good (more
behind us than the birds) in order to have a clear ID,
seeing as the markings can be difficult to see in
bright  light if the bird is backlit.

Incredibly, these were the first ibis we scoped, so
that in my opinion this search is very easy and there
must be thousands of the glossies out there (based on
our statistical analysis of one Glossy out of about 20
ibis we looked at).  But, seriously, they may actually
be more common than one might have guessed.

A thousand thanks to our friends in Idaho (You're the
man, Cliff!) for alerting us to something that may
have been under our noses all these years, and to Ron
for taking up the challenge in Utah.

Happy scoping,

David


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