After spotting an enormous flock of American White Ibis feeding on a lawn in the city, I swung around the block and slowly edged up to get some pictures. There were at least twice as many Ibis as you see in the picture below; I just couldn’t get them all in one picture. They were aggressively feeding on something. Competition was fierce among them. What striking, streamlined birds they are, with their curved beaks.
A Florida poet, Erik Scott, now living in the northwest, wrote a poem about Florida in which the Ibis is a symbol. This poem was one of a collection of his that I set as a vocal composition . He chose a good symbol for Florida; this bird is quite common in local neighborhoods. Usually, though, I only see one or two at a time. This time, there were at least 25 or 30. The energy of such a large flock in a confined space is what caught my eye. If I’d dared to get out of the car and get a more oblique angle, maybe I could have gotten them all in one frame.
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Are they eating the fertilizer. Too bad if that they are. Will they survive after eating that stuff?
Great photos.
I usually get Robins but now they left for the North country.
I don’t know for sure, I but I don’t think it was fertilizer. They seemed to be pulling long things out of the grass–worms, maybe?! The wiki article I linked to mentions that they like to feed on “newly cut lawns.” This was a newly cut lawn, so that fits. I love robins, but I haven’t seen one in a long time, but I don’t live near much nature.