The Scarlet Ibis, as its common and scientific names imply, is a bright scarlet red throughout its body, with the only non-scarlet regions being the eye and the bill, which are black. The Scarlet Ibis forms a superspecies with the White Ibis. The Scarlet Ibis is restricted to the northern third of South America, where it inhabits a variety of aquatic habitats, including mangroves, marshes, shallow lakes, and wetlands. It is often very common and can be seen in large feeding flocks with herons, spoonbills, and other species of ibises in the Colombian and Venezuelan plains.
Order: Pelecaniformes | Family: Threskiornithidae
Scientific name: Eudocimus ruber
Common names: Corocora, ibis escarlata, scarlet ibis
Conservation status: Least concern (LC)
Best season for scarlet ibis: Abril to November
Description
The body is bright red in both sexes, with a long neck and a long, curved bill. The characteristic scarlet color of the plumage is uniform and intensifies as the bird grows and ages, while the young have an initial dark brown coloration. The tips of the longest wing feathers are a deep black color, which is only visible when the ibis extends its wings. The legs are red, and the bill can be either red or black.
Behavior
The scarlet ibis is a sociable and gregarious bird, exhibiting communal behavior in food searching and protecting their young. They live in flocks of thirty or more individuals. Members stay close together, and breeding pairs organize their nests near other pairs in the same tree. To protect themselves, flocks often gather in large colonies of several thousand individuals. They also regularly participate in mixed flocks, gaining additional security from the large number of individuals concentrated together: storks, spoonbills, egrets, herons, and ducks are all common companions during feeding and flying.
Hábitat
It is distributed along the tropical coastal areas of northern South America, penetrating only inland in the Llanos region of Colombia and Venezuela. It loves to be in mangroves, muddy estuaries, and tidal marshes; also in freshwater marshes, shallow lakes, wastewater ponds, and lagoons.
*Source: SIB Colombia
