A Deceptive Name: White-faced Ibis at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge

The deceptiveness is temporal and seasonal. None of the White-faced Ibis individuals I saw today had a white face. The overall color of the bird is black from a distance, but up close and in sunlight, the bird is like a black opal, with a play of multiple colors from the iridescence of the feathers. The white face appears in the breeding season. The birds pick up some reddish tones as well.

We were making our first foray of the fall into the Merced National Wildlife Refuge off of Sandy Mush Road south of Merced. We weren't expecting to see a great many of the fall migrants (the Greater White-fronted Goose, the Snow Goose, the Ross's Goose) who will arrive in a few weeks, but we did see several thousand Sandhill Cranes (look for them in a post soon), and around a hundred of the White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi).

The Ibis family is found in warm environments all over the world. There are three species that are commonly found in North America, and there were one or two species in Hawaii until about 1,000 years ago when they went extinct. Only one is found in the American west, the White-faced Ibis. It is clearly related to the Glossy Ibis of the southeastern United States, as they are nearly identical in appearance. Isolation of the populations led to their differences.

I am constantly reminded of how ignorant I was of the incredible diversity of birds in our region. Before I took up birding and discovered the amazing wildlife refuges in our region, I thought the local bird species numbered in the low dozens instead of the hundreds, and that birds like the Ibises, Sandhill Cranes, and Snow Geese were seen on nature documentaries, not in my own backyard. If you live in the Merced-Modesto region, seek out the San Luis, Merced, and San Joaquin National Wildlife Refuges. You'll be shocked at the sheer numbers and diversity of the bird life in our region.