Maguari Stork

About the Maguari Stork

The maguari stork (Ciconia maguari) is a large species of stork that inhabits seasonal wetlands over much of South America, and is very similar in appearance to the white stork; albeit slightly larger. It is the only species of its genus to occur in the New World and is one of the only three New World stork species, together with the wood stork and the jabiru.

The maguari stork was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the herons, cranes and storks in the genus Ardea and coined the binomial name Ardea maguari. Gmelin's description was ultimately based on the "Maguari Brasiliensibus" that had been described and illustrated in 1648 by the German naturalist Georg Marcgrave in his book Historia Naturalis Brasiliae. The maguari stork is now one of seven storks placed in the genus Ciconia that was introduced in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. The genus name is the Latin word for "stork". The specific epithet maguari and the common name are from the Tupi language, "Maguarí" or "Baguarí" means "heavy bill". The species is monotypic... Wikipedia →