Beak of the Week – Wood Stork

Wood Storks are large wading birds with long legs, a curved bill, and featherless head and neck. They are mostly white with black flight feathers. Wood Storks tower over most other wading birds, standing over 3 feet tall. When flying, they typically soar using air thermals like vultures. Juveniles look like adults but have lighter bills and gray neck feathers, which they slowly lose over time.
 
Wood Storks forage in shallow wetlands, ponds, marshes, and rice fields where fish and other prey are in abundance. Wood Storks are colonial nesters and breed in areas with trees above standing water, such as cypress swamps and mangrove forests. Pairs construct large stick nests lined with twigs and leaves. Breeding Wood Storks in the United States are restricted to Atlantic Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. However, they can be found throughout the Gulf Coast from mid-June through early November. These birds originate from large breeding colonies in Southeastern Mexico and disperse northward to take advantage of flooded fall wetlands throughout the Gulf.
 
In the Houston region, Wood Storks are more often observed in the riceland and wetland areas of Brazoria, Fort Bend, Chambers, and Jefferson Counties. They can be hard to find in Greater Houston aside for flying over, and are hard to find on the Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston Island as they have a difficult time crossing open water. They are regular but rare summer/fall visitors to High Island—some years very few are seen and others they may be relatively common. Recently, as many as a dozen of these prehistoric looking birds have been found daily in the shallow wetlands at Smith Oaks Sanctuary.