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Record Rain Led To Bonanza Year For Florida’s Wading Birds. Just Not In The Right Places

WLRN Public Media | By Jenny Staletovich

Published March 29, 2018 at 4:38 PM EDT

Roseate spoonbills, the iconic pink birds that John James Audubon said were once so numerous in Florida Bay that the air “was darkened by whistling wings,” now mostly nest further north.";s:

The record rain that pounded South Florida last year and left the state a sodden mess had a silver lining: an explosion of wading birds.

Threatened wood storks, which nearly disappeared in the early 1980s, doubled their 10-year nesting average. Little blue herons and snowy egrets were up 62 and 54 percent. Even roseate spoonbills fell just slightly below a dismal average, which is better than plunging even lower.

But while the numbers were up, nesting patterns revealed a troubling pattern continues. The birds appear to be giving up on the southern Everglades, once the bread basket for the state’s wading birds.

Read more from our news partner, the Miami Herald.