I posted what follows on the Illinois Birder's Forum on June 3, 2014, but never told this story on this blog until February 1, 2015. Others confirmed on the forum that the bird in question was indeed a Glossy Ibis.
This evening, Joe Phipps and I drove to Emiquon looking for White-faced Ibises. We found two just North of the boardwalk along the edge of the lake. They flew up and circled around as we drove in, but finally they landed and one ended up preening where we were able to get great looks.
As we walked around the wetland, we stirred another ibis up just South of the observation tower. It circled, landed close to it's original spot and then took off across the lake. However, I managed one photo before it flew away.
As you can see more clearly in the photo I lightened, sharpened, and saturated below, the light color does not go all the way around the eye. The bird appears to have powder blue color around the eye instead of white. There is no apparent red in the eye and no red on the lores. The legs lack any apparent red, and the bill appears slightly brown. The bird's call also seemed lower pitched than that of the White-faced Ibises. We both thought this bird was a Glossy Ibis, but wanted to get some confirmation from others because the lighting of the photo is not the best.
By the way, thanks to Greg Neise and Evan Carlson for helping me to know where to look for these birds. We also had a single Black-necked Stilt North of the wetland loop, two Canvasbacks, and a flyover Black-crowned Night-heron. We were not able to relocate the Western Grebe, but light was fading by the time we looked. There were about 25 peeps at the South Globe Unit, but by the time we got there our light was so bad that it was difficult to tell whether they were Semipalmated or White-rumped.
Below is a link to the thread on Illinois Birder's Forum that you can cut and paste to your browser if you are interested.
http://www.ilbirds.com/index.php?topic=55000
Written and published on February 1, 2015
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