Great adjutant
Great adjutant | ||||||||||
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Great adjutant ( Leptoptilos dubius ) |
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Systematics | ||||||||||
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Scientific name | ||||||||||
Leptoptilos dubius | ||||||||||
( Gmelin , 1789) |
The great adjutant or argala marabou ( Leptoptilos dubius ) is a large walking bird from the stork family.
features
The Great Adjutant is 145–150 cm long and has a wingspan of 250 cm. The large gray upper wing ceilings and umbrella feathers contrast clearly with the otherwise black upper side. The belly and underside of the tail are light gray, the ruff is white. The featherless head is pink and the mighty bill is yellow.
Occurrence
While the Great Adjutant used to breed in South Asia from India and Sri Lanka to Borneo , today the breeding area is limited to Assam and Cambodia . The bird overwinters in Vietnam , Thailand and Myanmar . It inhabits lakeshore and salt water swamps, but also sparse forests and dry grasslands.
Way of life
The food consists of frogs, large insects, young birds, lizards and rodents, but also carrion and human garbage are not spurned by this stork. The Great Adjutant often breeds in small breeding colonies with up to 30 nests in tropical wetlands. Two to three eggs are incubated by both parent birds for 28–30 days.
Duration
While the bird was common in India and Burma in the 19th century, the number has declined to fewer than 1,000 today. The reasons for this are the destruction of breeding and forage areas by draining wetlands, the use of pesticides, as well as hunting and collecting eggs.
literature
- Richard Grimmett, Carol Inskipp, Tim Inskipp: Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Christopher Helm, London 1998, ISBN 0-691-04910-6
Web links
- Leptoptilos dubius in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2008. Posted by: BirdLife International, 2008. Accessed on December 20 of 2008.
- Videos, photos and sound recordings on Leptoptilos dubius in the Internet Bird Collection