Northern Bald Ibis

Glossy black body plumage with iridescent metallic green, bronze, and purple highlights on the wings and back. The head and face are unfeathered, featuring bright red skin with a rough, wrinkled texture, and a distinctive ruff of long, hair-like black feathers on the lower neck. Juveniles have duller greyish skin on the head and brownish body plumage.

Unmistakable in its range: glossy black body, long downcurved red bill, bare red head, and ruff of long black feathers on the neck.

Length: 70-80 cm, Wingspan: 125-135 cm, Weight: 1.0-1.3 kg

Usually silent away from breeding colonies, but produces hoarse croaks, grunts, and low wheezing notes at nesting sites.

Mainly carnivorous, feeding on large insects (beetles, grasshoppers, locusts), spiders, scorpions, small lizards, snails, and occasionally small mammals or nestlings. Forages by probing the soil with its long bill.

Arid or semi-arid uncultivated areas, steppes, rocky cliffs, and agricultural fields near cliffs where they nest and roost.

Mostly sedentary (resident) in Morocco, though historical Middle Eastern populations were migratory. European reintroduced populations exhibit seasonal partial migration.

Nests in colonies on remote, inaccessible ledges and crevices of vertical rock cliffs. Lays 2 to 4 eggs in a bulky stick nest lined with grass and herbs. Both parents share incubation and chick-rearing duties.

Southern Bald Ibis (Geronticus calvus) of southern Africa, which has a paler, whitish crown on an otherwise red head and pinkish legs.

Acts as an important predator of large insects and invertebrates, helping to control pest populations in arid and semi-arid agricultural or grassland ecosystems.

Endangered, with a small wild population concentrated mainly in Morocco, alongside ongoing European reintroduction programs.

Look for them in protected reserves or semi-desert rocky outcrops within their Moroccan range, or at specific reintroduction monitoring sites in Spain and Central Europe. They are often approachable when habituated in managed conservation areas.

The Northern Bald Ibis was once common across Central Europe until the 17th century, when it was wiped out primarily by overhunting and climate change. It is the subject of intensive international conservation and reintroduction efforts, including using microlight aircraft to guide captive-bred juveniles along ancestral migration routes.