The Life of Animals | Wood Stork | The adult is a large bird that is 83-115 cm (33-45 inches) tall and extends 140-180 cm (58-71 in) across the wings. Males weigh 2.5 to 3.3 kg (5.5 to 7.3 pounds), females weighing 2.0 to 2.8 kg (4.4 to 6.2 pounds) but big males can weigh up to 4.5 kg (10 lbs). The head is dark brown with a bald face, black, and the bill is dark yellow thick downcurved. The bare head and long beak, which can measure up to 25.5 cm (10.0 inches) long, the wood stork characteristic of other waders of its range. It is a tropical and subtropical species, which reproduces much of South America, Central America and the Caribbean. The wood stork is the only stork that breeds in North America today. In the United States there is a small breeding population and endangered in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, along with a newly discovered colony in southeastern North Carolina.
The Wood Stork is a broad winged bird that flies upward with outstretched necks and legs outstretched. It usually feeds the lower water levels concentrate fish in open wetlands, but also frequents rice fields. Taking the peak fish open water until a fish is detected. In the United States. Wood Stork favors cypress swamps, marshes, or (less often) in the mangrove habitat and close. State emergency Wood Stork led to the salvation of the small rural town of Colquitt, Georgia. Plans include a new bridge over Spring Creek and Colquitt around wetlands. However, the residence of the Wood Stork in the swamp forests of Southwest Georgia DOT must use the existing bridge in Colquitt.
A resident breeder in lowland wetlands with trees, the stork builds a large stick nest in a tree in the forest. Colonial nesting with a maximum of 25 nests in a tree. The competition for food is fierce, and if food is scarce, only surviving older chickens. Week of chicks fed 15 times a day and growing rapidly. During the mating season, wood storks need more than 400 pounds (180 kg) of fish to feed themselves and their young. In a time when young people are 4 weeks old, the parents leave the nest in search of food, and this continues until the chicks "farm" or leave the nest. Each adult will defend their nest from predators varied. Raccoons are the main predators of nests, and can cause kidney nesting colony almost complete when the water dries under nests in dry years, as they can easily access the nest with dry earth under the tree.
A fossil fragment found at Touro Passo Formation Arroio Touro Passo (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) may be living species, is found in most of the late Pleistocene, about 10,000 s of years. The North American fossils are from extinct relative of a larger M. wetmorei. This was probably a sister species, occurred sympatrically in Cuba in the late Pleistocene
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