Hunting like total bosses of the swamp, the Shoebill will stand there, motionless as a statue, and wait for some poor lungfish or baby crocodile to swim by. Shoebills practice a hunting technique called “collapsing,” which involves lunging or falling forward on their prey. Its menu also includes crazy stuff like Nile monitor lizards, snakes, turtles, toads, and baby crocodiles. The shoebill diet includes big fish like catfish and lungfish. The neck is relatively shorter and thicker than other long-legged wading birds such as herons and cranes.Other features of a shoe bill include long-thin legs with large feet which are ideal for walking on the vegetation in the freshwater marshes and swamps, yellow eyes, gray feathers, white bellies, and a small feathered crest on the back of their heads.The shoebill’s bill is fixed in a permanent Cheshire-cat smirk that contrives to look at once sinister and somewhat inane, and when perturbed the bird loudly claps its upper and lower bill, rather like outsized castanets.And last but not least is its unique foot-long shoe-shaped bill, tan with brown splotches, five inches wide, has sharp edges and a sharp hook on the end−the largest bill among all living bird species.The second is its unique uniform slate grey coloration.Shoebills stand over 4 feet tall, has a wingspan of up to 8 feet, and weigh up to 7 kilograms. The first is its enormous proportions.
In fact, three facts combine to give the shoebill its bizarre and pre-historic appearance. The Shoebill seems surreal, eerily prehistoric, something out of Jurassic Park. Only those who have never seen a shoebill can doubt the existence of Dinosaurs. Recent DNA studies support Gould’s original theory however, the shoebill is now placed in a monotypic sub-family of Pelecanidae. Gould believed the peculiar bird to be most closely related to pelicans, but it also shares some anatomic and behavioral characteristics with herons, and until recently it was widely held to be an evolutional offshoot of the stork family. The reports were dismissed as pure fancy by western biologists until 1851 when John Gould came across a bizarre specimen among an avian specimen shot on the Upper White Nile.ĭescribing it as the most extraordinary bird I have ever seen, Gould placed his discovery in a monotypic family and named it Balaeniceps rex meaning King Whale-head! The first known allusions to the shoebill came from early European explorers to Sudan, who wrote of a camel-sized flying creature known by locals as Abu-Markhub, or “father of a shoe” (just can’t get away from that shoe imagery). They even appear in the artwork of the ancient Egyptians. They were known to both ancient Egyptians and Arabs.
The most eagerly sought of all African birds, the shoebill is scientifically known as Balaeniceps rex and it is named for its bill which looks like a shoe.Īlso known as a shoebill or whale-headed, the shoebill has been a beloved species for a long time.
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