Tuesday I went birding with my friend L at the Parker River Refuge on Plum Island in Newburyport, Mass. We saw bobolinks, snowy egrets, great egrets, catbirds, swans, a marsh hawk, dozens of fat red wing blackbirds, a common tern, and of course many gulls. Two birds puzzled us, though.
One was a brown bird with a long straight beak. Kind of like a willet but heavier and taller. Still haven't figured out what it was.
We also saw a black bird fly overhead with a distinctive curved beak. It was large -- overhead it appeared to be about two feet long -- and completely black. We looked and looked in our bird books but weren't sure until I looked in my ancient Golden Book of Birds -- a book so old the pages are all completely detached from the binding. It said "appears completely black from a distance". Bingo -- we had seen a glossy ibis.
We decided to go home. In the marsh right next to the road we spotted 5 glossy ibises! We pulled off to check them out. Up close, you could see the rich purple/maroon color of the feathers on the upper back, and how they looked black and glossy on the lower back. The breast was a dark, dark green. L mentioned that they now make binoculars with a built-in camera and I wish we had had one that day. So I am forced to post other people's pictures, which are not quite what we saw.
Here's a great close-up shot of a glossy ibis, albeit one with rare rusty coloring. Another pic, and another.
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