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The shoebill (Balaeniceps rex), also known as the whale-headed stork, and shoe-billed stork, is a large long-legged wading bird. It derives its name from its enormous shoe-shaped bill . It has a somewhat stork -like overall form and has previously been classified with the storks in the order Ciconiiformes based on this morphology.
Shoebill storks look like something out of a dark fantasy novel. With their towering height, piercing eyes, and enormous bills, you might even wonder if these birds have escaped from Jurassic Park.
A small, freely-moving projection on the anterior edge of the wing of modern birds (and a few non-avian dinosaurs)—a bird's "thumb"—the word is Latin and means 'winglet'; it is the diminutive of ala, meaning 'wing'. Alula typically bear three to five small flight feathers, with the exact number depending on the species.
Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda. The hamerkop (Scopus umbretta) is a medium-sized bird.It is the only living species in the genus Scopus and the family Scopidae. The species and family was long thought to sit with the Ciconiiformes but is now placed with the Pelecaniformes, and its closest relatives are thought to be the pelicans and the shoebill.
The OED also observes that shiterow or shederow are terms used for herons, and also applied as derogatory terms meaning a thin, weakly person. This name for a heron is found in a list of game birds in a royal decree of James VI (1566–1625) of Scotland. The OED speculates that shiterow is a corruption of shiteheron. [6]
The marabou stork is a frequent scavenger, and the naked head and long neck are adaptations to this livelihood, as it is with the vultures with which the stork often feeds. In both cases, a feathered head would become rapidly clotted with blood and other substances when the bird's head was inside a large corpse, and the bare head is easier to ...
In 1806, Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. The following year, in 1807, Webster began two consecutive decades of intensive work to expand his publication into a fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language. To help trace the etymology of words, Webster ...
The black-necked stork is a large bird, 129–150 cm (51–59 in) tall having a 230-centimetre (91 in) wingspan. [1] The only published weight for this species was a single specimen at 4,100 g (9.0 lb), but this is nearly 35% less than the mean body mass of the closely related and similar sized saddle-billed stork. Therefore, this specimen of ...