A friend of mine – I call him “the Dutch Dayak” – frequently travels to the upper Mahakam River area, where his family lives. He recently told me that people there may occasionally shoot the ibis, because of their preposterous behavior. Any bird that shows itself so obviously on river banks, surely is worth a shot. Local people recollect that in the recent past, large groups of White-shouldered Ibises were regularly seen on pebbly river banks, but nowadays it is almost never encountered. I last saw one in 2005. The “Dutch Dayak” generally sees one or two birds, most but not all times when he does his annual upriver home trip. This doesn’t sound like many birds remain.