Northern Bald Ibis

The northern bald ibis is a glossy black, non-wading ibis 70 to 80 cm long, with an unfeathered red face and head and a long, curved red bill. It lives in open areas such as grasslands, rocky mountains and semi-deserts, often near running water. Colonies nest on cliff ledges, and flocks commute to feeding areas in V formation. The diet is mainly animal food, with lizards and beetles predominating, found by probing loose, sandy soil with the bill. Once widespread across the Middle East, northern Africa and Europe, the species disappeared from Europe over 300 years ago, and reintroduction programmes are underway.

About the northern bald ibis

The northern bald ibis is a large, glossy black ibis with a bare red face, a long curved red bill and a wispy ruff of feathers on the back of its neck. Its closest relative, and the only other member of its genus, is the southern bald ibis of southern Africa. Once found across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, it now survives in the wild mainly in Morocco.

Its scientific name is Geronticus eremita. Geronticus comes from the Greek for "old man," a nod to the bald head, and eremita is Latin for "hermit," referring to the dry places it lives. The German name waldrapp means "forest raven." Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner described the bird in 1555, and Linnaeus gave it a scientific name in 1758, as Upupa eremita. After the species vanished from central Europe, some later writers assumed Gessner's bird was a myth.

An adult measures 70 to 80 cm (28 to 31 in) long, with a wingspan of 125 to 135 cm (49 to 53 in), and weighs 1.0 to 1.3 kg (2.2 to 2.9 lb). The plumage is black with a bronze-green and violet sheen. The face and head are dull red and featherless, and the bill and legs are red. In flight the wingbeats are powerful, shallow and flexible.

Males and females look alike, but males are usually larger and have longer bills, and longer-billed males have more success attracting a mate. Chicks are covered in pale brown down. Juveniles look like adults except for a dark head, light grey legs and a pale bill; the bare skin turns red as they mature. Moroccan birds have noticeably longer bills than Turkish birds of the same sex.

Unlike most ibises, it does not wade. Both bald ibises differ from their relatives in three ways: they have bare heads, they nest on cliffs rather than in trees, and they prefer dry country to wetlands.

Behavior and diet

Northern bald ibises are social birds. They commute in V-shaped flocks between their cliffs and feeding areas, and winter flocks can hold up to 100 birds. During the breeding season they forage up to 15 km (9.3 mi) from the colony. At colonies they give a guttural "hrump" and a high, hoarse "hyoh," but they are otherwise quiet.

They feed by probing loose, sandy soil with the long bill as the flock moves across the ground. That needs soft earth and sparse plants no taller than about 15 to 20 cm (6 to 8 in). Lizards and darkling beetles dominate the diet, but they also take small mammals, ground-nesting birds, snails, scorpions, spiders and caterpillars. Males sometimes scrounge food from females.

The birds breed in loose colonies on cliff ledges or among boulders on steep slopes, and in the past they nested on buildings and castle walls. They start breeding at three to five years old and pair for life. The male picks and cleans a nest site, then calls in a female by waving his crest and making low rumbling calls. Pairs reinforce the bond by bowing and preening each other.

The nest is a loose pile of twigs lined with grass or straw. The female lays two to four rough-shelled eggs, blue-white with brown spots at first. Both parents incubate for 24 to 25 days and feed the chicks, which fledge in another 40 to 50 days and first fly at about two months.

Range and habitat

This ibis once bred along the Danube and Rhône rivers and in the mountains of Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as across North Africa and the Middle East. Fossils show it lived in Europe at least 1.8 million years ago. It disappeared from Europe at least three centuries ago.

Today almost the whole wild breeding population lives in Morocco, at Souss-Massa National Park and near the mouth of the Oued Tamri north of Agadir. These birds stay year-round, dispersing along the coast after nesting; coastal fog may supply the extra moisture that lets them stay. Elsewhere the species used to migrate south for winter.

A relict colony was found in the Syrian desert near Palmyra in 2002. Satellite tags showed its adults wintered in the highlands of Ethiopia. That colony dwindled to a single returning bird and may now be functionally extinct. A semi-wild flock at Birecik in southeastern Turkey is free-flying while breeding but caged in autumn to stop it migrating.

The key habitat need is a breeding cliff close to steppe or lightly farmed dry land for feeding.

Northern bald ibis vs similar ibises

Two other ibises are easily confused with this species.

Conservation status

The northern bald ibis is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List (BirdLife International, 2018). It was moved down from Critically Endangered in 2018 after protection let the Moroccan population grow from about 200 birds in the 1990s to around 700 in 2019. Some conservationists called the downlisting controversial because the genetically distinct, long-distance migratory population of the Middle East had just been lost from the wild.

Between 1900 and 2002 the species lost 98 percent of its population. Causes include hunting, loss of steppe and traditional farmland, pesticide poisoning, disturbance, dam building and electrocution on power pylons along migration routes. In Morocco, the main cause of nest failure is egg loss to predators, especially common ravens. The species is listed on Appendix I of CITES, banning commercial trade.

People have tried to protect it for a long time. A 1504 decree by the Archbishop of Salzburg made it one of the world's earliest officially protected species. Today, reintroduction projects run in Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain and northern Morocco. In one, young birds learn a migration route over the Alps to Tuscany by following human foster parents in ultralight aircraft. A Spanish colony near Cádiz had grown to about 180 birds by 2022, and in 2023 a pair bred in Switzerland for the first time in over 400 years. About 2,000 northern bald ibises live in captivity.