shoebill
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The shoebill (also known as the shoe-billed stork or whale-headed stork) is native to the upper reaches of the White Nile in Uganda. It has a little tuft of feathers at the back of its head, and a huge, hooked bill. Despite its size and clumsiness, it settles in trees to roost at night. It is possible that, despite its common names, the shoebill is not genetically linked to the stork family.
Large, grey, long-legged, swamp-dwelling African bird Balaeniceps rex. Up to 1.5 m/5 ft tall, it has a large wide beak 20 cm/8 in long and more than 10 cm/4 in wide, with which it scoops fish, molluscs, reptiles, and carrion out of the mud. Shoebills occupy largish territories of several square kilometres and build their nests on floating mats of vegetation, approximately 1.5 m in diameter.
In 1998 there were approximately 10,000–15,000 shoebills in Africa. They are the only species in the family Balaenicipitidae of the order Ciconiiformes.
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