Combining an illustrated history of the ibis with the personal story of his research (the first long-term study of the species), Keith L. Bildstein explores the critical ecological relationships between White Ibises and the wetlands they inhabit - and reveals a discovery crucial to the birds' survival.

Beginning in 1980, the author studied the thousands of ibises that converge each spring on tiny Pumpkinseed Island in historic Hobcaw Barony, South Carolina. Initially drawn to the species because of the ease with which he could observe them feeding on brackish-water fiddler crabs in the surrounding marshes, Bildstein quickly determined that when ibises were raising their young, parents often traveled as much as twenty-five miles inland to feed on fresh-water crayfish. Puzzled by their choice of distant inland feeding sites, he discovered that because salt toxicity prevents nestlings from developing normally on brackish-water prey, young ibises require fresh water prey to survive. Bildstein concluded that coastal populations of White Ibises need both a coastal "bedroom" and an inland "kitchen" to survive. Protecting their more conspicuous coastal bedrooms will mean little if the less conspicuous inland kitchens are destroyed by human development.

Bildstein's spirited narrative closes with an account of Trinidad's failure to protect its Scarlet Ibis and an analysis of the devastating effects of Hurricane Hugo on South Carolina's Whit Ibises."

Condition: Ex library book with all the markings and due date sticker glued to the rear endpaper. Pages are crisp and clean. Binding is tight. 
Price: 5.00 USD