Habitat
Wooded streams and river courses in open moist grassland and savanna woodland, man-made irrigated habitats, such as cultivated land, large gardens and playing fields, occasionally marshes, flooded grassland, the edges of lakes and reservoirs, mangrove swamps, coastal beaches, open woodland and at forest edges.
Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo [The Democratic Republic of the], Congo [The Democratic Republic of the], Côte dIvoire, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa (B), Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania [United Republic of], Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
Population
Estimated population is 70,000 - 400,000 (2010).
Status LC
Extended droughts, reducing food availability by causing damp soil to harden, making it more difficult to probe for insects, hunting and trapping are the main threats.
For more information see BirdLife International Species Factsheet.
Food
Carnivorous. Largely of insects, but also crustaceans, millipedes, centipedes, spiders, earthworms, snails and small reptiles.
Hadada Ibis (Bostrychia hagedash) [XC489856]
by Andres Angulo Rubiano from Lobeke National park, trail to gran savana , second point of recording., Cameroon (flight call, song)
Hadada Ibis (Bostrychia hagedash) [XC587623]
by isaac kilusu from Mandegee farm, oloitoktok, Kenya (flight call)
Nest
A basket-shaped platform of sticks and twigs located on a horizontal tree branch, in bushes or on man-made structures such as telegraph poles, dam walls or pergolas, situated 1 - 12 m (usually 3 - 6 m) above the ground or above water.
Subspecies
Birds from Somalia to Malawi sometimes assigned separate subspecies, erlangeri.
The following 3 subspecies are recognised:
brevirostris (Reichenow, 1907) - Senegal east to Zaire and Kenya, whence south to Zambezi Valley.
nilotica (Neumann, 1909) - Sudan and Ethiopia to north-eastern Zaire, Uganda and north-western Tanzania.
hagedash (Latham, 1790) - Southern Africa south of Zambezi Valley.
BirdLife International Species Factsheet