BREEDING BOOM
In the cypress woods of Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, the ponds seemed to be boiling. It was a devilishly hot April day in the western Everglades, but it wasn’t heat roiling the water—it was fish: juvenile bowfin, catfish, and other freshwater species trapped in shrinking seasonal pools.
A who’s who of wading birds had descended on the banquet from nearby nest-laden trees. Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, and Tricolored Herons stalked and stabbed. Roseate Spoonbills swung their beaks like metal detectors through the muck. White Ibises probed methodically, while Wood Storks line-danced through the shallows, bills ajar, snapping them shut when they bumped a morsel.
It’s a scene that played out across South Florida this spring, when abundant water created ideal breeding conditions. From coastal mangroves to tree islands in inland marshes, forest canopies dripped with pink and ivory as wading birds nested in some
