Distribution and Habitat
The range of the Scarlet Ibis is very large, and colonies are found throughout vast areas of South America and the Caribbean islands. Native flocks exist in Argentina; Brazil; Colombia; French Guiana; Guyana; Suriname; and Venezuela, as well as the islands of the Netherlands Antilles, and Trinidad and Tobago. Flocks gather in wetlands and other marshy habitats, including mud flats, shoreline and rainforest. There is an outlying colony in the Santos-Cubatão mangroves of Baixada Santista district in southeastern Brazil, which is considered critically endangered.
The highest concentrations are found in the Llanos region between western Venezuela and eastern Columbia. The fertile and remote tropical grassland plain of the Llanos provides a safe haven far from human encroachment. Together with its relative the Bare-faced Ibis, the Scarlet Ibis is remarkably prolific and conspicuous in the region.
Scarlet Ibis vagrants have been identified in Belize, Ecuador, and Panama; Aruba, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, and Jamaica; sightings have even been made in the United States. The species may well have been a natural vagrant to the Gulf Coast in the nineteenth century or earlier – in The Birds of America, John James Audubon made brief remarks regarding three rubra specimens he encountered in Louisiana. However, virtually all modern occurrences of the species in North America have been introduced or escaped birds. In one notable example from 1962, Scarlet Ibis eggs were placed in White Ibis nests in Florida's Hialeah Park, and the resulting population hybridised easily, producing "pink ibises" that are still occasionally seen.
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