#whale-headed stork

[critter-creature-or-beast]

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Meet the Shoebill Stork, an Enormous Bird That Looks Like a Muppet

Looking like a mix between a dinosaur and a Jim Henson puppet, the shoebill stork (Balaeniceps rex) is a sight to behold. The large African bird gets its name from its distinct beak, which looks like a shoe. Sometimes called a whale-headed stork, these birds actually aren’t storks at all, but are more closely related to pelicans and herons. These solitary birds are not only fascinating for their prehistoric look but also for their behavior.

Photo: Nazzu/Depositphotos

[youmiichi]

Cool Black Shoebill Black and white hand drawing of a cool looking Shoebill. -shops- Redbubble Society6 Threadless Teepublic SUZURI

[calamondinblooms]

It’s a shoebill. Cool but creepy looking thing.

[tyrantisterror]

At Sea Without a Map Final Roundup

Read the Chapter 1: Deadset on Getting Fishy roundup here!

Read the Chapter 2: Tree Storks roundup here!

Read the Chapter 3: The Seaship Graveyard roundup here!

Read the Chapter 4: Tiger Boat roundup here!

Read the Chapter 5: The Madman and the Monster roundup here!

Read the Chapter 6: The Crocodisle roundup here!

Read the Chapter 7: Kiss of Life roundup here!

Read the Chapter 8: The Volcano God roundup here!

It took a while, but we finally made it to the end of this strange odyssey. Sailor, Calibani and Bob finally found their way to the depths of the Sea of Monsters, uncovered (some of) Spindle Inc.'s nefarious agenda, opened a portal to the "normal" universe, and confronted one of the true leviathans at the heart of the sea. Families were reunited, evil was vanquished, and a very important choice was made - our Sailor is home, if not perhaps the home we expected.

And that's it for At Sea Without a Map! Thank you for following this strange little tale, especially to those of you who engaged in the replies and reblogs! It was a very fun writing experiment for me, and I hope it was an entertaining one for you.

You can read up on At Sea Without a Map Chapter 9: The Mother Ocean in the links below. There will be some concept art after the cut, and I'll be posting a more in-depth post-script about the story later today (today being January 1st 2025, for those reading this after the fact). Thank you for reading!

Part 49

Part 50

Part 51

Part 52

Part 53

Part 54

Part 55

Part 56

Part 57

Part 58

Part 59

Part 60

I thought I was particularly clever making the sea station for Spindle Inc look like a literal spindle. At the very least it was a striking image.

Sycorax was somewhat easy to design, being one of many variations on Calibani's design - literally just her tail stuck on an eel's face. Most of my work on her was spent fine tuning that face a bit until it hit the right sea serpent sweet spot for me.

The true leviathan/Abyssal Mother had a bit of an odd development. Initially I considered making it just a big whale monster, since that was one sea monster archetype this story hadn't covered yet. But it felt a little underwhelming for that to be the "final boss" of the story, so I decided to go in a more Cthulhu-ish direction (and cover a different sea monster archetype in the process). I hit upon this look where the squid-head of the monster also kind of looks like a woman whose hair is obscuring her face - and, well, the visual similarity that had with our Sailor felt too juicy to ignore. The Abyssal Mother has no final design - I figured any inconsistencies between her depictions in the story would actually work in her archetype's favor, as a creature whose anatomy and nature is fundamentally unknowable.

[mutant-distraction]

The Shoebill (Balaeniceps rex) also known as the whalebill, whale-headed stork, and shoe-billed stork is a very 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. However, genetic evidence places it with pelicans and herons in the Pelecaniformes. The adult is mainly grey while the juveniles are more brown. It lives in tropical East Africa in large swamps from South Sudan to Zambia.

Wikipedia

[proton-wobbler]

Shoebill (Balaeniceps rex)

"Its creepy! And really neat. They make such unsettling sounds and remind me of a dinosaur" "The only reason I know they exist is because an old man in a RV park told me. Also they look bonkers."

Also known as: shoe-billed stork, whalebill, whale-headed stork.

These large wading birds are incredibly solitary, including during their breeding season. While most other herons and waders prefer to form rookeries, shoebill will pair off and continue to raise their chick in isolation from other birds. They can be quite shy and are sensitive to human disturbance while breeding, though once the season has ended these birds are more tolerant of human presence.

They fish in freshwater swamps of central Africa, with their distribution largely dependent on lungfish populations, as those are a preferred prey for the shoebill. Papyrus levels also seem to play a role in their distribution, though they seem to avoid areas where that is the only reed dominating the swamp.

Last fun fact: shoebill will collect water to help cool their eggs down during incubation! They often will fill their bill twice, swallowing the first mouthful, and then will fly back to their nest to pour the water onto their eggs. What an ingenious idea for keeping the kids cool!

Sources:

Image Source: eBird (Jean-Louis Carlo)

[octahedral-chaos]

@mystic-131 have my favourite bird species! The shoebill stork (Balaeniceps Rex), also known as Whale-headed stork and Whalebill.

They're found in the swamps of East Africa, eating fishes, frogs, baby crocodiles and occasionally turtles, snails, small waterfowl and rodents. They are really big, getting anywhere from 3 feet and 7 inches (110 cm) to 4 feet and 7.1 inches (140 cm), with some reported individuals even getting up to 5 feet (152 cm) tall.

They're also the only member of their family, their closest relative being the Hammerkop. They're placed in the pelecaniformes.

[esmeislewd]

That’s a good girl, thank you for obeying *pats head and storkes your chin*

I do like that you’ve already had ice cream once today. What was it, 1, 2, or more scoops? Regardless that’s just more to show how little control you have. Fucking look at yourself you tub of butter. Those rolls are just going to keep coming and you’re going to keep adding them because we want you to.

As for the no touching rule, you may find that you’ll be allowed later if you keep up the videos and the obedience like a good girl. Like I said, you’re going to keep stuffing, I know you just had lunch and ice cream…but I also know you can fit more before you have your dinner. You can sloooowllyy snack if you want but you’re going to keep eating all day.

Do it because we’ll keep calling you teasing names (piggy, whale, etc, which ones your fave btw?) if you continue to shove food down your throat. Do it because it feels good to obey and be lazy and inhale food all day. Don’t do anything except move from your bed, to the pantry/kitchen, to the couch and back.

(Psst, is this what you’re looking for? I can tone it down or change it up a bit if you like ☺️ I just want you happy and I’m so proud of you for stuffing this much already)

-🍪

Thank you 🍪anon ^^ I'll do my best to keep eating for you all~

And honestly is it much of a surprise I can't keep away from the ice cream? I just can't help myself...I crave it so often and my willpower has gotten so weak lately it's impossible to stop myself from indulging even though I shouldn't if I hope to avoid blimping up. It was about 2/3 scoops? I just finished what was left in that pot.

(and it's wonderful!!! it's so lovely getting teased like this, getting to share the fun of gaining with others even if it's just through text and videos makes it all the more worth it to me. As for teasing names I like pig, piggy, sow (if you're getting degrading :3), cow, heifer, fatty, blob, fatass. I enjoy a lot of other names too but they tend to be more contextual and based on exactly how things are going and what kinks are being used. Happy to give more detail if required ^^)

[metaphrasis]

Meticulous inch-high engravings of grasses and flowers, egrets, spoonbills, the wattled crane, the griffin vulture, the whale-headed stork—the vocabulary of hieroglyphic writing is uniquely drawn from an aesthetic delight in nature. The pictures that form hieroglyphic words represent not only the living thing itself but metaphorical dimensions that convey the essence of the living animal: a picture of the curlew with its scimitar beak in the sand defines the verb to find, the flamingo is the hieroglyph for red, the letter f in the hieroglyphic alphabet is the deadly horned viper that makes the spitting fff sound as it strikes. The origins of written language in the forms of nature show the evolution of thought from the tactile experience of the physical world. Hieroglyphs are a clear and detailed portrait of the timeless and the observable, and as such they have a stunning range of meaning and a startling immediacy.

— Susan Brand Morrow, “The Turning Sky: Discovering the Pyramid Texts”

[ms-scarletwings]

Creacher Feature Friday 10: That’s No Spoonbill, but it’s Pretty in Pink!

Or should it be called Flamingo Friday, ha ha! eyyyy 👉🥴👉

Requiring little more introduction than that, most people already perceive these as unique enough birds at face value, with their odd shapes, famously salmon-to-pink plumage, and stylish struts; indeed, these bubblegum swans have captured the hearts of many the bird enthusiast and the intrepid lawn decorator. Nonetheless, all that shimmers in the sun is not cheap plastic, and there are many layers of deeper weirdness behind the flamingo than most could imagine. Let’s see if we can take a crack at it below!

As we begin with our triple Fs (fun flamingo facts), there’s no better place to begin covering like the basics. Flamingos, of the family Phoenicopteridae, are omnivorous shorebirds which live in large social flocks, or “flamboyances”, and use their specialized beaks to filter feed algae and small organisms from the waters they do love to wade. Though we often refer to them as one sort of animal, there’s actually six total species of flamingo. Two of them can be found in Africa, and the other four call the central and southern Americas their native home.

Very fittingly, you may notice that the smallest species has been dubbed the Lesser flamingo, while the largest of the family is the Greater bird, at least in height! Besides general size, the bulk of the morphological difference between these species actually goes into the specialization of their bills. Which does make sense, as their different migratory patterns and natural ranges have long fine tuned them for maximizing what they could gain of their own localized food sources.

Personally, I’d call the American Flamingo my favorite of the batch. It’s just almost about as big as the tallest ones, while standing apart as their most vibrantly colored cousins. Also known as the Caribbean flamingo, it’s also the only species actually native to the North American range as well as the Caribbean and Galápagos Islands.

For some, it’s a commonly held, intuitive misconception that flamingos find close relatives in that of the spoonbill storks or water-wading cranes, but it actually turns out that they share a much closer evolutionary line with that of grebes. What’s a grebe? They’re little and funny and they look like this

So certainly another funky bird of all time. What’s an even stranger piece of their history is the fact that these two animal types share a closer genetic lineage to that of land doves than they do to other water birds. Yeah, that’s including herons and ducks. The things we would near never guess without DNA analysis is such a head screw, sometimes. Or at least, a head scratcher.

You are what you eat

To speak again of the firey fashion sense of the marsh prowling American Flamingo, they in fact, like all Phoenicopteridae species, owe their coloration to a steady diet of aquatic organisms and plant matter they separate from the water with their teeth- well, not “teeth” per se, more like these unnerving, toothy ridges along their bills and yes, tongue.

Both mouth features act together much like the bristles of a baleen whale’s own jaws to comb and trap all manner of delicious critters and algae that the birds so love to snack on. Critters and algae that just so happen to also be filthy rich in carotenoids (organic, warm-color pigments) responsible for the natural colors of MANY living things, in fact: from the pink flesh of salmon who draw from the same food web, to lobsters, to pumpkins, and especially carrots, which can even alter the color of human skin if eaten in huge excess. In other words, you can tell a lot about how a flamingo’s been eating lately from the vibrance of its feathers. Their offspring, logically, come out as an adorably blank, fresh canvas of sort.

Unfortunately, though, you may notice they also enter the world with wimpy little bills not as equipped to start scooping krill and small fish out of the shore. So, how’s the grey lil goober to eat, then? Easy, the same way pigeons and male emperor penguins feed their own young, interestingly:

🍼🦩Bird Milk~! ✨

Yeah that’s right, lactation is yet one more thing mammals can’t say they hold a true monopoly on! Okay fine, there are a few differences. In this handful of avians, milk produced to nurture hatchlings is secreted by the lining of the crop (the first major stop in the digestive tract of a bird) and then regurgitated into the younger’s waiting mouth. This is also why the formal name for the stuff is “crop milk”. Nutritionally speaking, it’s high in protein and fats, but where it really differs from mammalian secretions is that it lacks carbohydrates. Most fascinatingly, though, the process of making crop milk and the process of mammalian milk production are induced by the same hormone- prolactin. What makes this phenomenon all the weirder in flamingos is all of those aforementioned carotenoids I mentioned them eating… well, funny side effect of that seems to be that it turns their milk blood red. Big part of why this specific “creepy” photo circulated like wildfire in some places of the internet.

Brutal as it may appear on first glance, it’s actually a wholesome demonstration of two proud parents working together to grow up a healthy and well-fed baby! You may also notice that the parents themselves look practically ghostly in the image. Just another side effect of good parenting. All of that sharing food means less pretty color juice for mom and dad to spare on their own appearance.

But this all this cozy attention within the nest site marks only the first few days of a chick’s life. By the passage of the first couple weeks, the newborn has begun to waddle around and explore well beyond the spot it hatched from, eventually joining up into massive groupings (called crèches) with the rest of the colony’s wee ones.

While mom and dad will still feed their own children, the crèche itself is guarded communally by the flock’s adults, related or not. It’s a behavior also seen in some penguin species to maximize the safety of an entire community’s offspring from predation. And these communities can be massive in the wild, made up of anywhere from hundreds to even thousands of breeding flamingos. Recent study has even indicated a greater depth to their social behavior than we’ve suspected before, complete with complex inter-group dynamics, the forming of cliques between birds of similar personality, and even what resembled friendship bonds between individual flamingos that would play a social support role for one another during conflicts. As well, the colony itself sticks together tightly and acts as one unit when it comes to the most essential stuff- migrating, feeding, and most particularly in breeding. Courting and nesting rituals are synchronized among the entire flock, with individual flamingos pairing off into monogamous partnerships for the whole of the season. Typically, they will lay one egg, sometimes more rarely fostering an unrelated hatchling, as in the case of the occasional same-sex pairing (another similarity they seem to hold in common with penguins).

And what time they are given to fill with such rich social lives! In the wild, flamingos are known to live between 20 and 30 years, but under captive care they have been known to top out into their 40s-50s. On the most extreme end, we have even seen outliers such as Betty, a captive Caribbean flamingo who passed away at 67 years old, and the world record achieving Greater, who stretched out to an astounding 83 years old in an Australian zoo before being humanly euthanized. Whoever said that the brightest flame must also burn the fastest was clearly leaving these wonderful birds out of their metaphor.

And so fare thee well, flamingos. For a first, we have a relatively popular animal to hand the spotlight moment for this tidbit. Hoping that I played at least a tiny part to mystify and then immediately demystify something new about a quirky, frilly dinosaur. Until next 💞

[mchi22]

top 5 funny aminal

oooouughhh animal..

5. tha house centipede

i wont include a pic bc i know even ppl who dont mind bugs get freaked out by centipedes but theyre just little guyyyyys (: did u know: after they eat they meticulously groom all fucking 30 of their legs :3

4. ball python

i had a big snake phase in middle school 4 some reason idk. i would never keep a ball python (or any other kind of snake) because yknow. bites. but i think they are very cute

3. giant isopod

i chose this pic because its really funny to me for some reason. hes just sitting there. anyway i love pillbugs and giant isopods are pillbugs but huge and also wet. this dude loves to eating a whale carcass

2. shoebill stork

YES it is funny to joke about how scary they look and the fact that their clattering sounds like a machine gun but theyre very smart and cute :3 also when theyre friendly towards another animal (or human) theyll bow and shake their head as a sign of trust & i just think thats cool of them

1.capybara (:

look at his shape. they are literally so sillay they are just chilling. i want to pet one so badly

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Meet the Shoebill Stork, an Enormous Bird That Looks Like a Muppet

Looking like a mix between a dinosaur and a Jim Henson puppet, the shoebill stork (Balaeniceps rex) is a sight to behold. The large African bird gets its name from its distinct beak, which looks like a shoe. Sometimes called a whale-headed stork, these birds actually aren't storks at all, but are more closely related to pelicans and herons. These solitary birds are not only fascinating for their prehistoric look but also for their behavior.

Photo: Webitect/Depositphotos

[jjcamacho0208]

The Majestic Shoebill Stork:

A Fascinating Bird of the African Wetlands

The Shoebill Stork, also known as the "whale-headed stork," is a fascinating bird that inhabits the vast wetlands of central tropical Africa. This majestic bird is known for its unique appearance and interesting behaviors, making it a subject of intrigue for bird enthusiasts and researchers alike.

Appearance and Characteristics

The most striking feature of the shoebill stork is its large, shoe-shaped bill, which can grow up to 9 inches in length. This bill is incredibly powerful and is used to catch its prey, which mainly consists of fish, frogs, and even small mammals. Despite its large size, the shoebill is surprisingly light, weighing only around 4 to 7 kilograms.

In addition to its bill, the shoebill is known for its tall stature, standing at an impressive height of around 4 to 5 feet. Its plumage is a bluish-gray color, which helps it blend in with its wetland environment. The shoebill's eyes are a striking yellow color, adding to its overall distinctive appearance.

Habitat and Behavior

Shoebill storks are primarily found in large swamps and marshes across central tropical Africa, particularly in countries like Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, and Tanzania. They are solitary birds and are known for their slow and deliberate movements, often standing still for long periods while waiting for prey to approach.

One of the most interesting behaviors of the shoebill is its unique hunting technique. When hunting, the bird will stand motionless in shallow water, patiently scanning the area for signs of prey. Once it spots a potential meal, the shoebill will use its powerful bill to strike with lightning speed, snatching its prey with incredible accuracy.

Conservation Status

Despite their unique appearance and intriguing behaviors, shoebill storks are considered to be a vulnerable species. The destruction of their wetland habitats, as well as hunting and poaching, has led to a decline in their population numbers. Conservation efforts are underway to protect these magnificent birds and their habitats, but more work is needed to ensure their long-term survival.

Conclusion

The shoebill stork is truly a remarkable bird, with its striking appearance and fascinating behaviors capturing the imagination of all who encounter it. As efforts continue to protect this vulnerable species, it is our hope that future generations will have the opportunity to marvel at the beauty and majesty of the shoebill stork in its natural habitat.

[satishrao2020]

AVIAN aerodynamics

There is no doubt about the grace, beauty and efficacy of the supreme, highly efficient flying machines Nature has created and helped evolve: Birds.

Man has designed and continuously improved on his flying machines learning from Birds and ocean dwelling inhabitants: Dolphins and Whales, to name some.

This post carries a single verse poem I penned followed by my ‘captures’ in and around Bengaluru.

Birds in flight,

Are a pleasing sight,

But at times, maladroit,

Capturing them is sheer delight.

I now present some birds in graceful flight:

Painted STORKs ( buck up mate….)

Brahminy KITE ( I can see you, am hungry, now am coming for you)

Little EGRET( so cool and pristine up here )

Black-winged STILTs ( enviable unison)

Black-headed IBIS ( on my morning walk, oops, flight )

Spot-billed PELICAN ( am heavy but have tremendous lift in my large wings)

Spot-billed DUCKs ( let’s hurry back home before the sun sets )

now for a few clumsy looking landings

Cattle EGRET

Painted STORK

Spot-billed PELICAN

Ciao for now………….