Mystery Bird: African Spoonbill, Platalea alba

I don't know about just looking at it: I can tell you its feeding habits from knowing what it is, (probably).

I'm going to guess that it tries to get food out of the ground in tall grass.

I'm with Simon; it's pretty hard to glean the actual shape of its bill from the photo, without knowing beforehand.

hrm. i might have to give you a hint, then. i suppose telling you it's in the taxonomic family, Threskiornithidae, is a foregone conclusion, then?

The angle obscures the distinctive shape of the bill, which is reminiscent of a familiar piece of cutlery.

This bird feeds by wading in water, sweeping its partly-opened bill from side to side, until it makes contact with a small aquatic creature, whether fish, amphibian, crustacean or insect. The bill then snaps shut and the prey is swallowed.

I meant that I knew what it was, which makes speculation about its feeding moot. The giveaway was the bill, confirmed by the position and colour of the eye.

I suppose that the body shape, long neck and bill (and implied legs) indicate a wader.

Knowing the bill shape - which is not entirely clear from the picture, but you can see it's a bit odd - you'd suspect it's not feeding in the same fashion as a heron.
The eyes are less forward-facing than a heron, which supports this.

All a lot easier when you know what it is, of course.

I thought of GrrlScientist's question about feeding in terms of fossils. If you found this shape (say) fossilized, what would you think about it's feeding?

Simon seems right on with the basic body shape being that of a wader. But then I'd ask, don't we have birds with the same basic body shape that aren't so much waders? Cranes, for example? Ostriches?

The beak is great, since there's a lot to be learned about an animal from the morphology related to feeding strategy. Again, as Simon notes, the beak isn't heron like. It doesn't strike me as a gleaning, catching fast-moving insects, or nut-opening sort of beak. But beaks also seem confusing to me. Parrot and Macaw beaks look a lot like raptor beaks to me.

Within this family, we have Ibis and Spoonbill. Am I right in thinking that most Ibis have a more downturned and sharper looking bill? And Spoonbills have a broader looking end of their bill?

I'd guess it's really sensitive to touch.

It's an African Spoonbill (Platalea alba). The first thing that IDed it was that it was photographed in Africa. The only other spoonbill I know of from that area is occasionally a Eurasian Spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia). However, only African Spoonbills have such red faces.

As for the feeding behavior, I imagine it acts like other spoonbills and wades while holding it's bill in the water, open, and moving it from side to side, if something brushes either side of the submerged beak, it snaps shut.

Bardiac -- with regards to your comments on parrot bills -- a recent paper out of the Field Museum (among quite a few other labs), published in Science in 2008, shows parrots as the sister group of falcons, with passerines as the sister to both of them. The hawks (including our New World Vultures) were quite distantly related to that group.