Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE STORK-LIKE BIRDS

(Order Ciconiiformes)

THE general appropriateness of associating most of the birds of this order under the name of Stork-like birds will be appreciated at a glance, for the majority of them have the long legs, long, slender neck, and elongated bills broadly characteristic of the Storks; but, as will be shown later, these characters are on the whole rather superficial, for birds that are really not very closely related to them, such as Cranes and Rails, possess many of the same features, while others are so very unlike the typical Stork-like form that the casual observer would never think of placing them together. And in this connection it may be confessed that ornithologists themselves are by no means agreed as to the closeness of relationship implied by placing them in the same order. Some students would separate quite widely the groups here brought together, but as the state of our knowledge is not such as to afford a final word on the subject, it may be accepted as perhaps the best expression of the facts now obtainable.

The characters relied upon for defining this order are necessarily of a somewhat technical nature, but there seems no way of avoiding their use. Therefore the Ciconiiformes may be described as birds in which the feet are not raptorial, but are fitted for wading or swimming. They are either wading birds with very long legs and toes not fully webbed, or if the toes are fully webbed the bill is bent abruptly downward«from the middle, or they are swimming birds with the hallux connected with the inner toe by a full web. The palate is of the so-called”band form”(desmognathous); the basipterygoid processes at the base of the skull are absent, as is the spina interna; the coracohumeral groove is deep and distinct; there is but a single pair of tracheosternal muscles, and the blind intestines (casca) are rudimentary and not functional.

The order Ciconiiformes may be divided into four well-marked suborders: the Steganopodes orTotipalmate Swimmers (Tropic-birds, Cormorants, Anhingas, Pelicans, Gannets, and Man-o'-war Birds), the Ardea or Herons and their allies, the Ciconice or Storks and Ibises, and the Phoznicopteri or Flamingos. As will be later set forth more at length, there are differences of opinion as to the placing of the Flamingos in the Ciconiiformes, some, indeed, giving them independent ordinal rank between the present and the following order (Anseri-formes). This would rather accord with the views of Huxley, but later studies would seem to range them more nearly with the Stork-like birds. The super-families and families into which they are variously divided are more fully described under their respective headings.

previous bird species next bird species