#shoebill stork

[piratedllama-art]

Quarters only, please [x <- prints here]

(done in procreate)

[unofficial-sean]

Shoebill Stork Plushie

[sneepsnorp3d]

oh my god he's been studying the blade.............

[life-on-our-planet]

🪶👞shoebill stork👞🪶

[bob-artist]

For my October inking challenge, I've decided to draw iconic hairstyles

and birds.

Shoebill with Beyoncé's high ponytail

Bittern with Farrah Fawcett waves

Blue-footed booby with the Rachel

[uncharismatic-fauna]

A Shoo-in Shoebill Stork

The shoebill stork, also known as the whalebill stork or Balaeniceps rex is in fact not a stork at all, but a long-legged wading bird belonging to the family Pelecaniformes. This species can be found in the central African tropics, from southern Sudan to northern Tanzania. Within this range, they mainly inhabit freshwater swamps and dense marshes, particularly those with deep water large reed beds.

Balaeniceps rex is often referred to as a dinosaur among birds due to its fearsome appearance. The average individual stands 1.1-1.4 m (3.6-4.5 ft) tall and has a wingspan of 2.3 to 2.6 m (7.5 to 8.5 in). However, adults are quite light, weighing only 4 to 7 kg (8.8 to 15.4 lb). Males tend to be larger than females, but otherwise the two sexes look identical. Adults have dark grey plumage with a lighter belly and darker wings. Their most striking feature is their beak, which is extremely large and can be said to resemble a wooden show (hence the name).

The shoebill's beak is very useful for catching its primary prey: fish. B. rex consumes a variety of species, including lungfish, catfish, and tilapia, as well as non-fish items like water snakes, frogs, turtles, mollusks, and even young crocodiles. Shoebills typically stalk their prey, or stand perfectly still and wait for their prey to come to them, before quickly snatching it up and decapitating it with the sharp edges of their beaks. Because of their large size and strong bills, adults are seldom prey for other animals, and they defend their nests fiercely from predators like snakes and other birds.

Outside of the breeding season-- and even during it-- shoebills are extremely territorial. Not only do they chase potential predators away from their nests, both males and females will fiercely defend their territory from other shoebills.

Breeding begins in the dry season, typically in in May, and lasts until about October. Once a male and female form a pair, they remain together for the duration of the mating season. They build a nest from floating vegetation, and 1-3 eggs are cared for by both parents; in addition to being incubated for warmth, one parent may also occasionally pour a beak-full of water over the eggs to keep them cool during the hot summer day. The eggs hatch about 30 days after being laid, and young are fed continuously-- though usually only one chick survives to adulthood. At 125 days old they become fully independent and leave to establish their own territories. The average individual can live up to 35 years in the wild.

Conservation status: The IUCN lists the whalebill stork as Vulnerable. Current wild population estimates sit at about 5,000-8,000 individuals. Primary threats include poaching for the zoo trade and consumption, habitat destruction, and pollution.

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Photos

Santiago Caballero Carrera

George Amato

Mana Meadows

[ridiculousbirdfaces]

Shoebill Stork by ToddLahman Shoebill Stork (Balaeniceps rex)

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[motleycrowmasks]

Gristle the shoebill stork is all shined up and ready to go home! Gristle is a commission, not for sale.

[storkology]

Egyptian Hieroglyphs and the Concept of Time

In the Late Predynastic Period of Egypt, the saddle-billed stork was used as the hieroglyph to depict the Egyptian concept of "ba". Now ba is super complicated, so I am going to define is simply as: their concept of the soul, the manifestations of the divine, and divine power. Egyptians of the time held the saddle-billed stork in high regard. Clearly they had good taste.

As the Old Kingdom of Egypt came around, the saddle-billed stork continued to be used as the hieroglyph for ba, even as its definition started to shift. But, as the Old Kingdom waned into the Middle Kingdom, the ba hieroglyph changed from the saddle-billed stork to the body of a different bird with a human head. Look how they massacred my boy.

So what happened? Turns out the Late Dynastic Period ended in around 3100 BCE, or 5100 years ago, and the Old Kingdom lasted from around 2700-2200 BCE, or 4700-4200 years ago, which is a dumb long time ago. In that stretch of around 900 years, the saddle-billed stork went extinct in Egypt! The poor artists that were tasked with depicting the saddle-billed stork had never seen one before, so they decided to change the symbol. The legendary run of the saddle-billed stork hieroglyph, a run I think about every day, lasted three times longer than the existence of the United States, and ended over 2000 years before the birth of Jesus. Egypt was around for so long that our tiny brains cannot comprehend how long it existed.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41812313?read-now=1&seq=11#page_scan_tab_contents

[nicothedingus]

shoebill stork stimboard with related stims for myself! x | x | x x | x | x x | x | x

[kanna-kizuchi-enjoyer]

cute bird!!!!!

[sneepsnorp3d]

Shoebill papercrafts :^)

I made these two patterns for my papercraft club this month- for it is SHOEBILL month!! these were really fun, they sit on my desk and stare blankly at me all day

[ssluggart]

couldnt stop thinking about this post so here

[dampfnudeldove]

the Bird Wall I'm making at work has people enchanted and not at all concerned for me

[nomi800]

Shoebill dice display! Download yours here!

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