|
Dry spell provides advantage for storks
Published September 4, 2009
Brazoria County suffers from intensifying drought conditions with almost triple-digit temperatures and a relentlessly clear sky. It’s not surprising that ponds, lagoons and sloughs literally are shrinking by the day. Native woodlands and grasslands wither, and the fire danger is extreme.
Almost every plant and animal suffers from lack of rain — all except herons, egrets and other long-legged wading birds. They are reaping the temporary windfall of all the fish and other aquatic creatures on which they can gorge.
As the water levels shrink, the fish and other delectable food items become concentrated into smaller and smaller areas. Locally, we have almost all the species of waders that can be found in North America during this season. Presently, one can see some spectacular concentrations of white great and snowy egrets and white ibis, tricolored and little blue herons, and pink roseate spoonbills where wetlads are drying up. If the water is near the coast and somewhat brackish, the much less common reddish egret enters the mix.
The king of the drought-followers is the wood stork, a 4-foot-tall white bird with a bald and wrinkled black head — the pioneers called them “gourd-heads” — and an enormous thick and slightly down-curved beak. Of all these wading birds, the wood stork is the only one that depends on drying-up ponds. The others merely are opportunistically picking up an easy meal.
If you can find a flock of wood storks feeding close to the road, watch their technique. They wade in the water with their bills opened about one-third of the way. When their sensitive beaks touch a fish, it automatically snaps shut like a rat trap. The stork never sees its meal. It gulps the fish and continues wading, head down.
A few weekends ago, 30 or so wood storks feeding along the Moccasin Pond loop drive at San Bernard National Wildlife Reserve were providing great, close viewing opportunities. But drying ponds are temporary phenomena, so next week they could be miles away feeding at a slough that still holds some water.
Wood storks follow drying wetlands throughout their lives. The birds visit Texas in the summer to take advantage of the predictable dry period in July and August, nesting in far southern Mexico and Central America. In those tropical latitudes, winter and spring are the dry seasons. These conditions are required to provide enough food to raise their single chick. If the dry season fails because of unseasonal rains, the storks might not be able to satisfy their brood, and whole colonies could be abandoned with no young produced that year.
Rather ugly up close because of their bald heads, the storks come into their own in the air. Few birds soar as buoyantly and effortlessly as do wood storks, and a flock of white-bodied, black-winged storks soaring effortlessly in the summer sky is a truly majestic sight.
John Arvin writes for the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory.
Share |
Save |
Mail |
Print
|
|
|
 |
|
Click for all
Top Ads listing
|
