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General Information
Description:
The Straw Necked Ibis look similar for both male and female. They have
black feathers with a bronze and green metallic sheen, but their head is
bare and the upper neck is black. They have stiff yellow straw coloured
lower neck feathers. During the breeding season the develop a red breast
patch. It has a long curved black beak and the birds grow from 58 to 76cm.
 Habitat:
Straw Necked Ibis often live in mixed flocks, and occur in large
numbers in grassland and pastoral country which they prefer, to wetlands. A
large number of birds in an area may mean a plague of grasshoppers.
They visit coastal foreshores mainly after rain periods but not usually in
large numbers. The Straw Necked Ibis live in most parts of Australia and is
in especially large numbers in the Murray-Darling basin . It is strongly
nomadic and few areas of the Australian continent are not visited at least
occasionally by it. It often occurs in mixed flocks with the Sacred Ibis
Food:
The Straw Necked Ibis eats water insects, frog, snakes and spiders but
mostly grasshoppers. They feed in both wet and dry areas.
Breeding: A breeding pair is formed by a
courting ritual of bowing with wings partly opened followed by mutual
preening. Before they start nest-building, near-by single birds are chased
off, by a display of aggressive behaviour in which they peck and raise their
neck-feathers. Straw Necked Ibises build platform nest from sticks, which
the male collects and the female pulls and jerks into place then lines it
with leaves. The birds nest in mixed colonies of other ibis and spoonbills
on rushes, bushes and trees. The largest colonies may number tens or
even hundreds of thousands of birds and nests are often so close together
they become trampled to a common platform as the season progresses. They
breed hroughout year depending on rainfall and lay up to five eggs. They may
have two broods in succession. The usual clutch is two to three eggs, which
hatch in 20 - 25 days. Both birds help to hatch the eggs and bow to each
other when they change over. They also bow to their young before feeding.
The chicks leave the nest after about 35 days.
Reference: Information -
Various Internet sites
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