![]() Several wildlife areas in these countries are inhabited by Storm’s storks. Storm’s storks are protected by law in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Fewer than 500 individuals are thought to still exist. The species was thought to be extinct in Thailand until a photo was taken on a camera trap. Storm’s storks are listed as Endangered by IUCN because they have a very small, fragmented population which is very rapidly declining, owing to destruction of lowland forest through logging, dam construction and conversion to oil-palm plantations. This species is one of the rarest species of stork. They live in undisturbed forest and freshwater habitats. Storm’s storks are native to Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand in Southeast Asia. ![]() Stormy is a favorite among the staff due to his quirky and sometimes stormy behaviors. He occasionally will display to keepers when they are cleaning or feeding by bowing his head low and making a raspy noise. One of his favorite pastimes is hunting for live minnows, which he receives as a treat on occasion. His beak also has to be long to reach into the water where he finds his food. He has very long legs so he can wade in deep water and tall grass. He is more active in the evening when it is quieter. He is a very secretive bird and tends to stay high in the canopy during the day without moving or making any noise making him very easy to overlook despite his size (he stands about 2 ½ feet tall). Stormy lives in the Aquatics room of the Bird World building. This is Stormy the Storm’s stork ( Ciconia stormi). If you want to find out more about these impressive birds or have a chance to see an actual one before your eyes, you may just have to visit the Bangweulu Wetlands with Robin Pope Safaris in June 2020.Introducing one of the largest and most easily overlooked birds in Bird World. After shaking its head to rid its mouth of any unwanted vegetation, it will decapitate its prey with the razor-sharp edges of its bill and then gulp it down. When a shoebill has prey in its sights, it will launch forward with its bill wide open and engulf whatever creature it has found. Their fishing tactics are a little terrifyingīe thankful you are not a lungfish or even a baby crocodile in the swampy fishing ground of a shoebill. The sound can be quite loud and frightening. They do this around the nest, when greeting another shoebill or sometimes when they are about to strike prey. It is called bill-clattering and can be likened to a machine-gun being fired. While shoebills are mostly silent, when they do make a noise, it is quite an alarming sound to hear. They are often found standing tall and statue-like on a clump of water vegetation and then moving slowly while watching for fish. At 1.5m in height, they stand as high as celebrities like Lady Gaga and Kourtney Kardashian. ![]() If water birds had a basketball team, shoebills would undoubtedly make the team, along with their wading counterparts the saddle-billed stork and giant heron. Weaker chicks will be bullied by their tougher siblings, even to the extent of starving them and sometimes outright killing them.Īs King of the Swamps, the shoebill clearly has some attitude © Robin Pope Safaris While they may hatch two or more chicks, it is generally just one that survives and that is, of course, the strongest. In the world of shoebills (and other species), the parents are not ashamed of having a favorite ‘child’. Their maternal instincts are questionable Better still, the hippo forces the fish up to the surface, making them easier to catch. As a hippo charges through swamps thick with reeds, they open these otherwise inaccessible watery channels to the shoebill that can then use them to fish. Sharing the same swampy patch with hippos has proven to be quite useful for shoebills. The shoebill’s notoriously deathly stare © Robin Pope Safarisīut what else do we know about these extraordinary waterbirds? Well, here are five of some of the most interesting facts about them, which hopefully will inspire you to find out more:
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