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Shoebill

Balaeniceps rex · hard

The shoebill is difficult to take seriously and extremely serious as a predator. It stands well over a metre tall, grey and prehistoric-looking, with a pale bill shaped like a wooden clog and edged with a sharp hook. It hunts by standing entirely motionless in papyrus swamp, sometimes for hours, then collapsing forward in a violent lunge that takes in bird, water and vegetation together. It then works the catch in the bill, discarding the plants and decapitating the prey before swallowing.

Its preferred food is lungfish, which surface to breathe and so must expose themselves — a habit the shoebill's patience is well suited to exploiting. It will also take catfish, water snakes and, occasionally, young crocodiles.

The bird greets its mate and defends its nest with bill-clattering, a loud machine-gun rattle audible across open water. Otherwise it is largely silent.

Shoebills live in wetlands across central and eastern Africa, with strongholds in the swamps of South Sudan, Uganda and Zambia. They need large undisturbed papyrus, which puts them in direct conflict with drainage for agriculture, and they are also taken for the private collection trade. They breed slowly, so losses are not easily replaced.

Where it lives

Worml lists the shoebill as native to 8 countries — Central African Republic, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Its habitat is papyrus swamps and freshwater marsh.

Ranges here are reduced to whole countries for playability and exclude introduced populations — see about the data for what that simplification leaves out.

In the game

Shoebill is rated hard. To solve the round you need to find any 4 of its 8 listed countries. How scoring works →

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