Wood Stork

Thanks for the comments on the brown pelican photos I sent yesterday. Today I am sending photos of the wood stork, another species that I photographed for the first time during my trip to Florida in April.

There had been a drought in the Bonita Springs area of Florida for several months and birds feed in the same few shallow canals. Most ponds had nearly dried up when I was there, so there were only a few places that birds could feed. In the first photo, there are 4 or 5 different species feeding in the shallow pool. The most predominant bird in this photo is the wood stork.

The second photo shows two storks feeding together and the third shows a single bird. They walk around with their open beaks in the water hoping to catch a fish. While I was there, one of the storks walked up on the bank and dropped a fish. As soon as the fish dropped out of its beak, the others made a mad rush to try to get it. There was a flurry of activity with wings flapping and the fish disappeared. I am not sure if the stork that caught it actually ate it!

The wood storks are fairly rare in this part of Florida, but there was a flock of twelve there for a couple of weeks in April. I photographed these birds a few times in different locations.