RH Speirs | Photographer - Ibis Interaction

Here's an interaction between two White-faced Ibises I had the privilege of observing and capturing. There's no one single image here that particularly appeals to me, as one or both birds either isn't; in a nice pose, catching the light right, showing it's face, or blocked by the other bird. But, I think the entire sequence together tells a bit of story about what can potentially go on between these birds, so I thought I'd share the photos here. I guess the things I like the most about these pictures is when one of the birds is in a pretty cool/flashy pose, and just the fact that we get to see their physique as they stretch and contort their bodies throughout. Ibises are most appealing to me, like most of us I suppose, because of their shape, and flashy coloring. I find it interesting that the core of their body is roughly the same size as a Franklin's Gull's is (also seen in these photos), they just seem to be all legs, wings, neck, and bill lol!

I don't know what set them off, they just started doing this out of nowhere it seemed. Unfortunately, I was out of the best position possible to capture this. I had arrived early at North Glenmore Park on the morning of May 22nd, it was cold and quite breezy that morning. I hadn't captured any photos I was particularly happy with at this point, as all the interesting subjects were just beyond my camera/lens range. At around 8:00 am I moved up, and away, from the water's edge (about 20 meters or so) for a bit of shelter from the relentless wind, to warm up my hands a bit, and to have a quick bite of breakfast. This is when the interaction between these two birds took place. As quick as I could, I slipped my breakfast bar into my pocket (for later), and started shooting pictures of this event. It was happening very far away, so I had to crop these pictures down to 11.6 megapixels (about as far as I'm ever willing to crop an image under certain circumstances) just so the birds aren't too tiny within the frame. Still a decent enough size for on screen viewing, but unacceptable to print from. It would have been nicer to be much lower down the bank at the waters edge, like I normally am, to give an "at their (the subject)" level perspective, and to just be that little bit closer. Oh well, it just really was a pleasure to see these magnificent birds doing something other than foraging for a change.

I don't want to assume anything as there's so much I don't know about Ibises. Only just saw my first one ever a little over a year ago at Frank Lake, Alberta. I returned there 5 or 6 times over the following few weeks, and never really got a real great look at them on any of those visits. Incidentally discovering that these birds actually come into the city, just about a week or so prior to this event, was quite exciting and an unexpected surprise for me for sure. My first thought, regarding this interaction, was they were simply having a little squabble/fight over something. They could have been playing, or practicing, or establishing hierarchy, or even courting, I just don't know. It did look pretty intense while it was going on, but at the same time, I did not observe any real harsh blows/strikes with blatant intent to injure.

There are 48 pictures displayed here of this event that occurred within about a 25 second period of time. I think I only had to remove 1 or 2 of the photos from the entire captured sequence (unacceptably blurry/out of focus). Enjoy!

White-faced Ibises, Glenmore Reservoir, North Glenmore Park, Calgary, AB - May 22nd

Ibis Interaction - Calgary, AB

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