Unfortunately, the younger chick only seems to be preferred by the mother if the older one doesn't survive. The younger chick was forced out into the heat, and died slowly.”įor this reason, the mothers often end up raising only one chick. When the parent arrived it favoured the larger chick, shading it from the sun with its wings and giving it water from its bill. “It would drive its sibling over to the side of the nest. Instead of welcoming the second chick, it's common for the first-born to start a violent rivalry. “On several occasions the older chick attacked its younger sibling, drawing blood,” said BBC producer Alex Lanchester. So, the first-born chicks are much bigger than the younger siblings. The shoebill is a tall bird that can measure as much as 1.5 metres (5 feet) in height as well as between 1 and 1.4 metres in length from beak to tail. The name shoebill is derived from the fact that the birds big bill resembles a shoe. They found that many of the nests had two chicks, which were often born about five days apart from each other. This is why the shoebill is also referred to as Whalehead or Whale-headed stork. Yet, one group of scientists were lucky enough to observe these young birds, and it wasn't as heartwarming as they imagined. It has a somewhat stork-like overall form and has previously been classified with the storks in the order Ciconiiformes based on this morphology. It derives its name from its enormous shoe-shaped bill. It lives in swampy areas and feeds on mainly fish. The shoebill ( Balaeniceps rex) is a very large stork -like bird. Its wingspan (distance between the tip of one wing to the other) can exceed 7 feet. The Shoebill stork is a pre-historic bird believed to be closely related to the now-extinct dinosaurs. No other bird can remind us of its kinship with dinosaurs as well as the Shoebill stork or Shoe-billed Stork (Balaeniceps rex). They may be big, but they can fly if they want to. Here are seven reasons to love this big bird: 1. Shoebill birds are shy creatures, so it's rare to see the behaviors of chicks in the nest. The Shoebill stork impresses with its size and majesty: its height varies from 3.5 5 feet and can weigh an average of 12 pounds. Despite his prehistoric appearance and the craziness that is his proportions, the shoebill stork is actually quite endearing if you bother to dig a little deeper.
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