Depending on your perspective, a shoelace has the absurd allure of a long-lost dodo or looks like it could strike at any moment.

What makes the aptly named shoebill so unique is that the nearly 1-foot-long beak resembles a Dutch clog. Brown with brown spots, 5 inches wide, with sharp edges and a sharp hook at the tip. Its specialized bill allows the shoebill to capture large prey, including lungfish, tilapia, eels, and snakes. It even eats baby crocodiles and Nile lizards.

At first glance, shoebills do not appear to be ambush predators. Up to 5 feet tall with an 8-foot wingspan, a yellow-eyed shoebill, gray feathers, a white belly, and a small crest of feathers on the back of the head. They also have long, thin legs with large feet that are ideal for walking on vegetation in the freshwater marshes and swamps they inhabit in East Africa, from Ethiopia and South Sudan to Zambia.

Shoe-billed storks can remain motionless for hours, so when an unfortunate lungfish takes to the air, it may not realize this dangerous prehistoric-looking bird is coming until it’s too late. . The birds practice a hunting technique called “collapse,” which involves lunging or falling forward at their prey.

Shoe-billed storks have their own family, even though they were once classified as storks. They have features in common with storks and herons, such as the long necks and legs typical of wading birds, although their closest relatives are pelicans.

Although they are mostly silent, shoebills sometimes make a tinkling call, a sound made as a greeting and while nesting. They stay cool with a technique called gular vibration — vibrating the throat muscles to dissipate heat. Chicks sometimes make a hiccup-like sound when they are hungry.

Reproduction

Shoebills reach maturity at three to four years of age and breeding pairs are monogamous. However, these birds are very solitary by nature and even mating pairs will forage on opposite sides of their territory. Breeding pairs build nests on the water surface or on floating vegetation and can be up to 8 feet wide. Females lay an average of two eggs at the end of the rainy season.

As co-parents, both birds tend to care for the eggs and young. This includes incubating and turning the eggs, and cooling them with water, which they carry back to the nest with their large beaks. Hatching occurs in about a month. The chicks have blue-gray feathers covering their bodies and lighter-colored beaks. Usually only one chick survives to adulthood.

Conserve

The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that there are only about 3,300 to 5,300 adult shoebills left in the world, and their numbers are decreasing.

When land is cleared for pasture, habitat loss is a major threat and cattle will sometimes step on nests. Agricultural burning and pollution from the oil and tannery industries also affect their habitat. Shoebills are hunted for food in some places, and in others they are hunted because they are considered a bad omen.