Deep blue sky with Ibis by Christiane Schulze

About "Deep blue sky with Ibis"

by Christiane Schulze

About the artwork

Copyright: Christiane Schulze

The ibises and spoonbills or ibis birds (Threskiornithidae) are a family in the order Pelecaniformes. As the name suggests, the family includes two types of birds that originally formed separate subfamilies: the ibises or sickles and the spoonbills. They are easy to tell apart because they differ in shape. The most striking distinguishing feature is the shape of the beak. Spoonbills have a long, conspicuously flattened beak, while ibises have a downward curved beak.

Spoonbills and ibises are distributed worldwide, especially in tropical and subtropical regions. Spoonbills range farthest north. The white spoonbill breeds at Lake Neusiedl and in the Netherlands, among other places. The bald ibis continued to breed in the Alpine region until the 17th century. There are currently plans to reintroduce the species to Central Europe, Spain and Italy.

The family Threskiornithidae includes 34 species of large wading birds. The family has been traditionally classified into two subfamilies, the ibises and the spoonbills; however recent genetic studies are casting doubt on the arrangement, and revealing the spoonbills to be nested within the old world ibises, and the new world ibises as an early offshoot.

Ibissen en lepelaars (Threskiornithidae) zijn een familie van vogels uit de roeipotigen. De familie telt 35 soorten.

Traditioneel werden de ibissen en de lepelaars onderverdeeld in twee verschillende families. Door DNA verwantschapsonderzoek