Audubon South Carolina: Wading Bird Rookeries

Thursday, June 07, 2012

Wading Bird Rookeries

Wading birds of different species can be found nesting in the same rookery. An ideal rookery location would be an island that would prevent or limit access by mammalian predators like raccoons. If not an island, then trees or vegetation that provide nest sites over water inhabited by alligators that would eat any predator swimming or falling into the water under the rookery.

Even if the various wading bird species (Wood Storks, Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Little Blue Herons, Snowy Egrets, Tri-colored Herons, Cattle Egret, White Ibis, Yellow-crowned Night Herons, and Black-crowned Night Herons) find suitable nesting sites, they still need to feed themselves and their chicks. Therefore, quality foraging habitat needs to be located nearby.

The old-growth, cypress-tupelo swamp at the Audubon Center at the Francis Beidler Forest provides foraging habitat, especially for Yellow-crowned Night Herons and for White Ibis whose chicks cannot tolerate the salt contained in a marsh diet. The ponds (Storks & Corks) at the Silver Bluff Audubon Center and Sanctuary are maintained and manipulated specifically for young Wood Storks, but all wading species benefit from the concentration of prey available in the shallow water. Although both Audubon sites are high in quality, neither have the salt marsh, which is packed full of food sought by many wading bird species. We found rookeries and high-quality salt marsh when we visited our friends at the Lowcountry Institute on Spring Island and the new boardwalk at the Cypress Wetlands Nature Trail (see video) in Port Royal.

Here are images of Wood Storks nesting along with other species in a pond along golf course on Spring Island.