Ibises on Watson Lake

The ibis is not a bird that I usually think of when out exploring in the Arizona landscape. I associate it with Africa, and Egypt specifically, somehow familiarizing myself with the bird by seeing its ancient hieroglyphics and statues in a museum, on PBS or in a "National Geographic."

A little research shows that the species known as the African sacred ibis was indeed venerated by the Egyptians, and was associated with the deity Thoth, who among other things, was responsible for writing and mathematics. As a result, the ibis was featured as the first hieroglyph, and a number of millennium later, its long, down-curved bill was forever embedded in my memory.

Ibises form a large family (threskiornithidae) of wading birds with up to 34 species distributed worldwide. It's not uncommon to see a few varieties of them in Florida and along the gulf coast, but in the West we mostly have just one - the white-faced ibis. In this part of the country, they tend to summer in suitable areas for nesting in the vicinity of the Great Salt Lake or around the northern Sierra Nevada mountain range. Mexico is their home during the winter. So points between in Arizona are just short seasonal migratory stops on their long journeys back and forth.

I shot quite a few photographs of several white-faced ibises that made a layover at Watson Lake in the Prescott area last week. It was my first encounter in the wild with any ibis - not counting spying what I thought was a white ibis while on a bus in La Paz, Mexico - and a fascinating opportunity to study a little ancient history while exploring the modern natural world.