Shoebill

Balaeniceps rex. Bahr el Ghazal estuary, Sudan. 1913.

The rare African bird with the unusual beak can be seen in various zoos, but in very few museums. The exhibit at the NHM is very true to life.

FATHER OF THE SHOE
This large bird, standing up to 1.2 meters tall, was called abu markub, or “father of the shoe” by Arab explorers hundreds of years ago because of the shape of its bill. Its primary habitat is swamps and lakeshores heavily grown with papyrus or reeds in Southern Sudan, where it hunts for large fish, frogs and snakes. Its wide, deep upper beak with a sharp edge and nail-like tip is suited perfectly to seizing and dissecting its slippery prey.
Shoebills are exceptionally unsocial birds. Males and females stay together only to rear their young. They build their nests in the middle of a swamp, often on drifting islands made of plant material. To ensure that the clutch of eggs does not overheat, the eggs are turned regularly and sprinkled with water. When the young hatch after 30 days, their beaks are small and pink.
It has still not been determined which birds are the shoebill’s closest relatives. Due to its similarity with storks and herons, for many years it was classified as a wading bird. Molecular genetic analyses, however, indicate that it is more closely related to the pelicans and is, therefore, one of the Pelecaniformes – an idea that is by no means new: ornithologist John Gould presented this theory when he first described the shoebill in 1850.
When this shoebill arrived at the NHM as a gift in 1913, it was considered something special, as the note “a beautiful specimen of the valuable Balaeniceps rex” in the annals reveals.
Today the species is gravely threatened by drainage of the Sudanese swamp regions.