The Shoebill

Let’s peek for a moment into the life of an extraordinary bird. We will fix our eyes on a papyrus marsh in eastern Africa, and specifically on a female Shoebill who lives there alone (these birds are solitary creatures). She is about 4 ½ ft tall, weighs around 12 lbs, and is slate grey all over. There are feathers sticking out of the back of her head that lend to the image of an unruly cowlick. Her legs rather resemble a heron’s legs, and in some ways she looks like a stork, or a pelican. And then, of course, there is that impossible bill, a massive thing,  being 9 inches long and 4 inches broad (can you see why they call them Shoebills?), with a vicious hook on the end. This bird is an interesting sight, don’t you think?

 Since Shoebills are nocturnal, her days are spent sleeping. Come evening, however, our Shoebill is standing motionless, tucked away in the reeds, waiting for an African Lungfish (her favorite food) to swim by. She is not exactly graceful as she attacks and grapples it, but then again, that’s not the point. The point is to swallow the fish, which is something her clog of a bill can certainly accomplish. A few other things on the menu for our lady are baby crocodiles, rats, waterfowl, other fish, frogs and other amphibians, small turtles, and water snakes.

There is no specific season when Mrs. Shoebill will lay her eggs, but she will probably wait until the onset of the dry season, when the nest is less likely to be flooded. Anyway, about once a year, 1 to 3 eggs will be laid on a flat nest of sticks in the swamp grass, and after about one month the babies will hatch. Amazingly, they will not be able to stand up until they are 2 ½ months old! I suppose those spindly legs take awhile to develop. They will not be able to hunt for themselves until they are 3 ½ months old.

It is thought that there are 5,000 to 8,000 Shoebills in the world today, living in swamps and wetlands from Sudan and western Ethiopia all the way down to Zambia. The main threat to this species is destruction of habitat, illegal hunting and trapping, and the drying up of the marshes where they live.

                 Oh, and one more thing: Did you know that mother Shoebills will sometimes fill their bill with water and pour it over their overheated nestlings?