It’s been party time for the straw-necked Ibis since the rain – they have a knack of turning up when the bugs are bursting out of the ground.
The Boss found 82ml in his gauge after last Friday’s fall and the sodden ground pushed up the beetles, crickets, millepedes and scorpions that the ibis like to chew on. And they’ve swarmed in by the hundreds.
We get mixed flocks of ibis here on the river – there’s always a few white ibis in the flock but it’s mainly the straw-necked variety with those straw-like feathers hanging down off their necks, with long blue-black backs and an iridescent purple, green and bronze glow about them. The dark wings also have a multi-coloured sheen in the sunlight .
Like the white ibis, they have bald heads and dark, downturned bills but they prefer the irrigated paddocks of the Goulburn Valley, whereas the white ibis are generally more of a coastal, estuary and urban bird. They seem to get on together all the same, although the white ibis is tamer and more tolerant of people nearby.
The straw-necked ibis has long been called “the farmer’s friend” because of the way it takes care of crop-eating pests, including grasshoppers, spiders and caterpillars, as well as the earth-dwellers; they will also eat freshwater snails, small fish and yabbies as well as small lizards, reptiles and rodents.
Whereas the white ibis have adapted to urban environments, the straw-necked ibis are rarely scavengers of human waste. They are largely migratory along the east coast, and up north, they have been seen eating cane toads, avoiding their lethal poison by flicking the toads around until they release the toxin that toads use as a defence mechanism – then taking them to a creek to wash them.
When they turned up on the weekend, I saw a large flock of the birds working steadily across the paddock prodding with their bills, looking like a procession of bent old men in dinner suits, nodding as they took each careful step.
They are jumpier than the white ibis and prefer to forage away from New Boy and me – if we get too close they will all lift in unison, a metre or less off the ground and drift, like a vast flat lid, to another part of the paddock.
As dusk approaches on still summer evenings, we often see them fly in formation, just above the house in V-shaped rafts of 200 birds or more, winging from the irrigated paddocks towards the river to roost for the night. This is when the missus tells us all to shoosh up so we can hear the soft beat of their wings.
There are plenty of guttural grunts as they squabble over the best place to roost. You will often find a straw-necked ibis perched on a high dead branch during the day but in the evening, they like to roost close together.
We know their favourite spots because the grass and scrub beneath their trees is covered with their thin white bird droppings by the time we take our morning walk.
The droppings have a distinctive scent but not an unpleasant one; I enjoy a vigorous roll in them when The Boss isn’t alert enough to divert me. Personally, I think ibis odour adds to my otherwise wolf-like allure. Woof!