White-faced Ibis

How to find it

Set your expectations low and your curiosity high. Check the edges of wetlands and wet farm fields, where a feeding flock often turns up. A spotting scope helps with fine detail, such as the metallic colours of breeding adults. Look closely at every dark ibis, since eye colour and facial pattern separate this species from the far more likely Glossy Ibis. Dark ibises on a Caño Negro boat trip, for example, are much more likely to be Glossy.

How to recognise it

This is a long-legged wader with a long, downcurved bill. Its plumage shimmers purple, green and bronze.

Breeding adults show:

A red eye ringed by a white mask.

Pink bare facial skin edged with white feathers.

A grey bill.

Brighter red legs.

Adults have red eyes all year, while Glossy Ibises have dark eyes. Glossy also has bluish facial skin with no white border.

Juveniles of the two species are nearly identical, so a young dark ibis is a hard call even for experienced birders.

What it sounds like

Recording: Tser, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

This ibis is sociable. It travels in flocks and mixes with other wading birds. Flocks of a few hundred have been recorded, though most are much smaller.

It feeds by touch, probing moist soil with its curved bill for earthworms and other invertebrates. It works marsh edges and wet farm fields. It also sometimes adds human-made objects to its nests, such as cigarette lighters, shotgun shells and hair combs.

Where it lives

Across its range it lives mainly in freshwater wetlands, especially cattail and bulrush marshes. It also feeds in flooded hayfields, farm fields and estuarine wetlands.

These are range-wide habits rather than Costa Rican ones. It breeds in the western United States and central Mexico, and the Costa Rican birds are visitors from that population.

When to see it

It breeds in the western United States and central Mexico and spends the winter in Central America and South America.

Similar birds

Costa Rica also has the Glossy Ibis, which the official list marks as a resident. In non-breeding plumage the two are very similar, and the White-faced is slightly smaller and warmer in colour. A tour trip list for the far north recorded a single Glossy Ibis flying over a Caño Negro boat trip.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

The official Spanish name is Ibis Cariblanco, and a Chilean bird page lists the same name as the one used in Costa Rica. Other general Spanish names for the species are cuervillo de cañada, cuervo de pantano and ibis oscuro, though these are not specifically Costa Rican nicknames. The look-alike Glossy Ibis is called coco negro or ibis morito here.

Status and conservation

The official Costa Rican bird list gives it the status M?, an uncertain migrant, and Avibase's Costa Rica checklist labels it rare or accidental.

Photography tips

A spotting scope helps with fine detail, such as the metallic colours of breeding adults. Checking the edges of wetlands and fields often turns up a feeding flock.