Why Wading Birds Are Getting A Little Less Busy In The Everglades

Back-to-back drought years reduced the numbers of tiny fish that provide food for many birds. Then, in the prime nesting month of April, untimely storms disrupted seasonal drying cycles that concentrate fish and other tiny prey, which wading birds depend on to feed their fast-growing and voracious chicks. As rising waters disperse prey, Cook said, “the parents are just unable to keep up with the demand,” and many chicks don’t survive. 

The population of wood storks, long classified as an endangered species, has expanded across the southeastern United States to the point that federal wildlife managers last month proposed proposing reducing its status to the less-severe “threatened” category. But for the fifth time in the past six years, there were no wood storks nesting in what once was the largest breeding colony in the United States — the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Southwest Florida. Jason Lauritsen, director of the Audubon-managed Corkscrew sanctuary, said the storks’ disappearance from a prime breeding ground points to a troubling disruption of seasonal cycles that flood and drain marshes that are critical to wading birds. “If we hope to recover the largest historic colony in the U.S., immediate focus must be put on restoring and protecting short-hydroperiod  wetlands in the western Everglades,” he said.