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The White-faced Ibis is a splendid bird, tall and stately, covered with dark chestnut-brown feathers that catch the sunlight to shimmer and glisten with metallic tones of green and purple. It has been called the "Bronze Ibis."

The marshes of northern Utah rank high in importance to this ibis. Usually in warm spring and summer months, large colonies of hundreds or thousands of these ibis noisily go about courting, nest-building, and incubating three to four bluish-green eggs. It is in places like Utah 's Great Salt Lake and Cutler Marsh near Logan that the world's largest number of chicks are hatched and hopefully will successfully fledge to help sustain the population for another generation..

Movement and flight characterize this ibis. Nesting occurs in bulrush or cattail marshes over shallow water. Constantly these eloquent birds rise and alight from the nests. Preferred foraging areas today in Utah are flooded agricultural fields. Large flocks probe beneath the surface with their long bow-shaped bill for earthworms, insects and any edible morsel. On daily flights with strong steady wing beats alternating with gliding on set wings, they fly in diagonal lines across the sky to feeding areas and then return to their nest and young. In late summer and fall, when no longer tied to localized nesting sites, the ibis widely disperse becoming true bands of wandering nomads in search of shallow wetlands, wet meadows and fields. Far and wide flocks roam throughout the state and then beyond our borders to winter south of Utah largely in Mexico .

Two ibises, Glossy and White-faced are so identical that some contend they are a single species. Both appear all dark from a distance leading credence to the name "Black Curlew" applied to both species. Only in breeding season does the White-faced species grow the tiny line of white feathers around the bare facial skin that circles around behind the eye. So small is the white and for so brief a time that some consider the name a misnomer. The Glossy Ibis is cosmopolitan occurring widespread in both Eastern and Western hemispheres. In the world, it is the most widespread of ibis species. The White-faced Ibis is restricted to the Western Hemisphere, and breeds most commonly in the marshes of the Great Basin . The Glossy Ibis is restricted in nesting to southeastern coastal states.

The dignified silhouette of a standing ibis appears often in ancient hieroglyphics. Ibis were revered by the Egyptians. Thoth, a lunar deity, was the god of wisdom and writing. Mixing human and animal characteristics, Thoth was usually represented as an ibis or a man with an ibis head. He appears often in ancient myth and legend. Killing of an ibis was a capital offense. Today the Sacred Ibis no longer nests in Egypt . The Sacred Ibis is a slightly larger ibis with a white body but in form it could be the White-faced Ibis chiseled into ancient temple walls and painted on royal tombs.

Of all places on earth, Utah is most abundantly gifted with the magnificent White-faced Ibis. It certainly merits our reverence and protection.

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