Wildlife Photo Challenge Day 7B – They Grow Up

This is day seven of my photo challenge requested by my friend Don Bromberg. A bunch of wildlife photographers from all over the planet have been participating in this exercise and discipline.

Well, this is the last in the 7 Day Challenge series, I hope you have been enjoying the pictures and the narratives. In case you didn’t notice I’ve been publishing two a day and not just one like most photographers. I’ve tried to offer you shots that you may not have seen before since I post so much in groups instead of on my own timeline. I thought this would be a good way for my friends not in photographic groups to be able to see some shots too.

Nature is funny sometime. Most white birds start out white as most dark birds hatch as dark chicks, well once their feathers come in at least. This is an Ibis, a classic Florida bird, the mascot of University of Miami. They are hatched with beautiful blue eyes that are crisp and clear when you get to look right into their eyes. In Florida there are two sub-species of Ibis, the white Ibis and the glossy Ibis, the one below is the white one. The curious part of this story is that the white Ibis is hatched dark then turns white as it grows up and molts it’s feathers.

This is a photo of a white Ibis juvenile that has partially molted it’s dark feathers. The molting process makes this bird extremely interesting because, as you can see, they are almost two-toned. Until the last couple years you would not normally see these molting birds in white, adult flocks, but for some reason we see more and more Ibis in this stage of molt. I can only assume that there may be more Ibis chicks in a breeding spot with fewer and fewer food resources.

Let me know if you have enjoyed this series, I may do it again, it takes some time to do this but it’s a lot of fun, I love comments. Check out the entire series at http://jon-mark.com/category/7-day-challange/.