Archie Carr:
A Naturalist in Florida
wood stork Mangroves
ARCHIE:One sign that the tip of the Florida peninsula is edging down close to the tropics is its coastal fringe of mangrove swamp. The Florida mangroves are among the most luxurious in the world. Along with the hospitality they offer marine creatures, mangroves provide nesting places for the herons and other water birds without which Florida would be a very dismal landscape. The only rookeries I know in southern Florida that you can get close to without doing damage are on mangrove islands.
JEANETTE: For the bird life out here, the mangrove islands are very important. Quite a few different types of pelicans right here and I see some cormorants. But not only the pelicans and cormorants, but many different types of wading birds; egrets, ibis, and herons will come out to these mangrove islands and use them as rookeries. Mainly, one reason is that out on the mainland there are many different predators, terrestrial predators, such as raccoons.

They're safer out here on the island. There also all the things they need to build nests right out here. They're right next to the marine estuary here so you've have a lot of fish that they feed on; the young will feed on that. A great food source.

  
ARCHIE: Not long ago my wife and I went through Everglades National Park and we took the short evening cruise. The captain shut off the engine, and for nearly an hour we drifted there. The white ibises had finished nesting the month before and now were coming in to pass the night, each separate flock appearing as a dim, wavering line in the northeast, then slowly condensing into a chain of white birds.  

 
 
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