Wood Stork (Mycteria americana), San Pedro River near St. David, Cochise County

This Wood Stork was found and photographed by Laura Stewart on 08 September 2018

Found at an ephemeral pond at a private residence. The bird was gone the next morning.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Wood Stork was a regular post-breeding visitor to the Lower Colorado River and to the Salton Sea in California, but populations in Mexico have declined dramatically over the last fifty years and continue to shrink. The last Wood Stork record from Arizona was in 2009.

The only confusion species would be an escaped Sacred Ibis which has occurred at least once in Arizona at Painted Rock Dam. That long staying individual was for many months misidentified as a Wood Stork. Sacred Ibis has a black bill, head and neck and much less extensive black on the wings.  

08 September 2018, photo by Laura Stewart

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