Big Bird Business
By Karen J. Coates
Wildlife Conservation Magazine, October 2007

At noonday, I sway in a hammock, sighing and sweating in the languid air. Quintessential Cambodia serenades me cicadas and chickens, rambunctious kids and a neighbor banging on an oxcart. Across the way, a woman bathes at a well, hair coiled atop her head, her body swaddled in a sopping orange sarong. I want to join her, but that would require movement. At dawn, I hiked a few miles, tracing the edges of ancient watering holes. Come 2:00 P.M., I will walk again through forests and paddies looking for birds. But for now, I rest.

The birds are why I'm here. The birds are why, every day or two or three, an air-conditioned vehicle plies the pitted roads and sand paths through Cambodia s Northern Plains to unload a few visitors on the isolated village of Tmatboey (ta-MAHT-boy), a farming community of 800 or so inhabitants within the Kulen Promtep Wildlife Sanctuary. Here, two of the world s rarest birds the giant ibis and the white-shouldered ibis make their home.

Both of these long-legged water birds nest and forage in the deciduous forest, grasslands, and seasonal wetlands surrounding Tmatboey, a landscape that many compare to the open woodland savannas of East Africa. At the height of the dry season from February to April, the birds congregate at man-made ponds called trapeangs that date to the Khmer kingdom of Angkor (AD 802 AD 1432). For centuries, trapeangs have provided water for people, livestock, and wildlife.

Long ago, the ibises likely followed buffalo and elephant herds as these animals churned up the ground and opened up water holes. Today, the wild ungulates are mostly gone, but farmers and their domestic livestock create favorable conditions for the birds. With their thin, elegantly curved bills, the ibises feel around for grasshoppers, beetles, worms, eels, and small crustaceans to devour. It s a marvelous sight to spot a giant ibis in the treetops, peering over a veritable feast of hopping frogs as a red sun rises in the distance.

Now, languishing in my hammock, I wonder what sights are in store for me this afternoon when a village guide will lead me once again through the plains. Our plan is to beat the white-shouldered ibises to their late-day feeding spot at Trapeang Cheak Malou, so we can watch as they fly in.

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