Mycteria AmericanaThe morning of 7 May 1972 was another of those cruel tricks that spring likes to play on Rochester birders. Cold, dark and threatening rain, after overnight lows in the 30s. However, Doris Wilton, Kay Doris and Betty Sigas had planned to go birding, and Wilton’s lunch was packed, so why not? The birders made a couple of stops near Braddock Bay, then headed out Curtis and Chase Roads to “check out the waterfowl.” Wilton was riding “shotgun” because “I’m farsighted and can pick up birds on the wing.” It was a “huge white bird” on the ground, however, in a backyard pond or pool at 342 Curtis Road that caught her attention as they drove by. Swan? Domestic fowl of some kind? She wondered before the trio piled out of the car for a look. “Things like ‘look at that bill —how about those legs – I can’t believe it!’ ” could then be heard. Wilton and Kay Doris had birded the Everglades enough to know a Wood Ibis when they saw one, especially only 75 feet away! After 10 minutes it flew off to the northeast, but was soon located again on Manitou Road as other birders, alerted by phone, converged on the area. It was our first sighting of this spectacular wader. “Guess my only moral to my report is that one should go birding without any preconceived ideas of what one is going to find. I think warblers, and find a Wood Ibis,” Wilton noted. (GOS, June 1972)BackgroundThis is the largest wading bird that breeds in the United States. It flourished when extensive wetlands in south Florida drew down during the dry season, concentrating its prey in the shallows. However water management practices and degradation of the Everglades – where breeding pairs declined from 2,500 pairs in 1960 to 100 in 1994 – have significantly reduced this species’ numbers in that state. This has been only partly offset by expansions into Georgia and South Carolina. In 1997, total southeast U.S. population may have been as high as 25,000 birds. However, by 2001 populations may have plummeted to as low as 10,000 because of drought. Birds occasionally disperse as far as Massachusetts, Montana and California after breeding or after nesting failures. This species also breeds in South America, and locally in Mexico and Central America. (BNA 409: 1-4, 18; KB 51:749)Status Sporadic, rare visitant.Occurrence 1. One 7 May 1972 (Wilton, Doris, Sigas, mob) west of Braddock Bay was last seen flying west and was a “new species for the region.” (KB 22:128) 2. Two immatures on 6 July 1976 (Joe and Thelma McNett) were seen flying west parallel with the Lake Ontario state Parkway at Shore Acres. The McNetts drove along even with the storks for three or four miles “until the birds turned south over their car,” John Brown reported (BA, 7 July 1976; KB 26:215). “The McNetts took the next road south and watched the birds as they dropped down out of sight and apparently landed on a farm south of the parkway.” The McNett’s described “two dingy white large birds flying parallel to the car. Heavy wing beat. Long, thick bills, neck and legs extended. The white was very dingy, and a blackish pattern on wings and tail was obvious .. . head and neck also were paler than the adult birds we have seen. The long heavy bill was slightly decurved and yellowish. Now and then the birds opened their beaks as they flew.” “They flew with very strong powerful beat and kept up as we drove 35 to 40 m.p.h. The legs were bluish gray, and decidedly long and extended as they flew.” (LG, August 1976)The most memorable occurrences came late summer 2001 when as many as sixteen of these endangered southern birds, all immatures, visited four ponds near Clyde, 15 August to 10 September. The ponds were 20 to 60 feet in diameter, surrounded by a muddy edge and lined at least on one side with trees or tall bushes. “After feeding, they would roost on the pond edge or in a tree,” Dominic Sherony reported. “Initially, they would come to the same pond daily, then after four to seven days, sporadically. It is most likely that as the fish population of the pond decreased, they looked for better locations.” Generally they ate bullheads, usually about four inches long, and frogs. (KB 51:748) Three birds appeared at Cranberry Pond on 28 August of that year. (KB 51:748-50, 783-4). They left the pond at 9:30 a.m. the next morning, and were seen soaring east over Badgerow Park at 10: 20 a.m. “This is 35 miles from Clyde and it is tempting to speculate that these were some of the same birds,” NYSARC noted in its 2001 report. “When they departed at 9:30 AM on the 29th, the storks headed east. The reasons for the incursion are unknown but possibly relate to the extended drought in several southern states, although it is possible these could have come from as far away as Mexico.” (KB 53:285)Sherony suggested the birds were probably in search of better feeding locations. “During the past year there was a large influx of Wood Storks in Louisiana and Arkansas, believed to be birds of the Mexican population that came north for the same reason.” (KB 51: 749)(NOTE: The Monroe County annotated list cites a 17 May 1970 record. However, there is no record of this in either the Goshawk, Kingbird or Bull, or in two John Brown columns about the highlights of the Spring Census – “Big Day” – held on that date. See BA 21, 28 May 1970. See BA, 12 May 1983 for one Walt Listman reportedly saw flying overhead at Hogan Point. Again, there is no record of this in the Goshawk, Little Gull or Kingbird.)