Excerpt Most Patient Feeder NAME shoebill Balaeniceps rex LOCATION central Africa ABILITY standing motionless for half an hour or more You're not going to use a bill like this for anything ordinary. The aptly named shoebill of central Africa is a true specialist, feeding almost entirely on lungfish -- big, sluggish fish of well-clogged, sheltered waterways. They are not easy to catch, being large and awkward to deal with, and it takes refinements of fishing technique, as well as of the bill, for the shoebill to be successful. One of those refinements is the shoebill's extraordinary patience. In some ways its fishing mirrors the technique of herons, waiting by the waterside and eventually striking when prey comes near. But the shoebill takes the waiting much further, sometimes staying completely still for more than half an hour; a heron, and any other stealth hunter for that matter, would have given up long before that. Observers watching shoebills feeding often miss the strike, having passed into a kind of torpor themselves. The strike, when it comes, is a real all-or-nothing affair; it is often described as a "collapse." The shoebill lurches head first at the fish, and the rest of its anatomy follows. With a bill 7 1/2 inches (19 cm) long it scoops up a huge mouthful, frequently containing some of the lungfish's habitat as well -- water, plants and all -- and it may take some time before the hunter regains its balance. A lungfish constitutes an ample meal, and after feeding the shoebill can go for several days without food. In the life of this bird, it seems, a lack of impetuous hurry is the rule. Excerpted from Extreme Birds: The World's Most Extraordinary and Bizarre Birds by Dominic Couzens All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
