Mycteria

Mycteria Temporal range: Middle Miocene to Recent
Yellow-billed storks (Mycteria ibis)
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Ciconiiformes
Family:	Ciconiidae
Genus:	Mycteria Linnaeus, 1758
Species
Mycteria cinerea Mycteria ibis Mycteria leucocephala Mycteria americana
Synonyms
Dissourodes

Mycteria is a genus of large tropical storks with representatives in the Americas, east Africa and southern and southeastern Asia. Two species have "ibis" in their scientific or old common names, but they are not related to these birds and simply look more similar to an ibis than do other storks.

Painted stork Mycteria leucocephala at Uppalapadu, Andhra Pradesh, India

The Mycteria storks are large birds, typically around 90–100 cm in length with a 150 cm wingspan. The body plumage is mainly white in all the species, with black in the flight feathers of the wings. The Old World species have a bright yellow bill, red or yellow bare facial skin and red legs, but these parts are much duller in the wood stork of tropical America. Juvenile birds are a duller version of the adult, generally browner, and with a paler bill.

They are broad-winged soaring birds that fly with the neck outstretched and legs extended. They are resident breeders in lowland wetlands with trees in which they build large stick nests.

These storks walk slowly and steadily in shallow open wetlands seeking their prey, which, like that of most of their relatives, consists of fish, frogs and large insects.

Species

Extant Species

Image	Scientific name	Common Name	Distribution
	Mycteria cinerea	Milky stork	Southeast Asia
	Mycteria ibis	Yellow-billed stork	Senegal and Somalia down to South Africa and in some regions of western Madagascar
	Mycteria leucocephala	Painted stork	south of the Himalayan ranges and are bounded on the west by the Indus River system where they are rare and extend eastwards into Southeast Asia
	Mycteria americana	Wood stork or "wood ibis"	South America, Central America and the Caribbean

Fossils

Two prehistoric relatives of the wood stork have been described from fossils:

• Mycteria milleri (Miller's stork) (Valentine Middle Miocene of Cherry County, US) - formerly Dissourodes
• Mycteria wetmorei (Wetmore's stork) (Late Pleistocene of west and southeast US, and Cuba)

The latter seems to have been a larger sister species of the wood stork, which it replaced in prehistoric North America.

Late Miocene tarsometatarsus fragments (Ituzaingó Formation at Paraná, Argentina) are somewhat similar to Mycteria but still distinct enough to be probably a distinct genus, especially considering their age. A Late Pleistocene distal radius from San Josecito Cavern (Mexico) may belong in this genus or in Ciconia. A "ciconiiform" fossil fragment from the Touro Passo Formation found at Arroio Touro Passo (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) might be of the living species M. americana; it is at most of Late Pleistocene age, a few ten thousands of years.

Further reading

• Grimmett, Richard; Inskipp, Carol, Inskipp, Tim & Byers, Clive (1999): Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. ISBN 0-691-04910-6
• Hilty, Steven L. (2003): Birds of Venezuela. Christopher Helm, London. ISBN 0-7136-6418-5