The Story
I photographed this Bare-faced Ibis (Phimosus infuscatus) at La Florida near Bogotá, Colombia on June 29, 2017. It lives in open places such as wet meadows, savannas, marshes and rice fields. It is usually seen in flocks, with its own kind or other ibises, and sometimes with domestic animals. It is called the bare-faced ibis because it has no feathers on its face, which is usually reddish. La Florida is a wetland and park known as the Parque Metropolitano La Florida, near the Bogotá River.
I took this with a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM, at 1/500 sec, f/6.3, ISO 100. IUCN lists the Bare-faced Ibis as Least Concern with a stable population, and Bogotá had about 150,000 hectares of wetlands in 1940, of which only about 1,500 remain.
©2018 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Bare-faced Ibis (Phimosus infuscatus) belongs to the family Threskiornithidae (Ibises and Spoonbills) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2025), with the population trend listed as stable. Source: IUCN Red List