The New Flight of the Ibis - Issue 101: In Our Nature
▻http://nautil.us/issue/101/in-our-nature/the-new-flight-of-the-ibis-rp
In 2007, on a fine summer day in rural Austria, a flock of northern bald ibises followed two paraplanes, gondolas with prop engines, held aloft by yellow and blue parachutes. Although the ibises looked like vultures on the ground, the resemblance disappeared in the air. In flight their long, curved bills jutted forward, their black wings shimmered purple and green.The scientist piloting one of the paraplanes was leading the ibises to a mountain pass in the Alps and a wintering ground in Tuscany. For centuries, ibises had been plentiful in Europe. They summered north of the Alps in today’s Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, where they nested on cliffs and castle walls and fed from meadows. By the early 1600s, the sociable animals, vulnerable to hunting, had been wiped off the continent. (...)