Critically Endangered
Giant Ibis
Thaumatibis gigantea
The giant ibis (Pseudibis gigantea) is a wading bird of the ibis family, Threskiornithidae.
Appearance
The adults have overall dark grayish-brown plumage with a naked, greyish head and upper neck. There are dark bands across the back of the head and shoulder area and the pale silvery-grey wing tips also have black crossbars. The beak is yellowish-brown, the legs are orange, and the eyes are dark red.
Adults are 102–106 cm (40–41.5 in) long and weigh about 4.2 kg (9.3 lb).
Range and habitat
The giant ibis is a lowland bird that occurs in marshes, swamps, lakes, wide rivers, flooded plains and semi-open forests as well as pools, ponds and seasonal water-meadows in denser deciduous forest. It generally is found in lowlands. It is confined to northern Cambodia, with a few birds surviving in extreme southern Laos and a recent sighting in Yok Đôn National Park, Vietnam.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The giant ibis eats aquatic invertebrates, eels, crustaceans and small amphibians and reptiles. Insects such as locusts and cicadas are eaten regularly when abundant and seeds occasionally supplement the diet.
Outside of the breeding season, frogs and mole-crickets appear to be perhaps the most significant prey types for giant ibises. Feeding flocks may consist of a breeding pair or small family group and have been observed mixing with black ibises. Next to nothing is known of its breeding behaviour, but it nests in trees, with a possible preference for Dipterocarpus trees.
In crisis
Giant Ibis is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Giant Ibis, Wikidata item Q931759. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
