Storks move in

CHARLESTON - That majestic, black-and-white winged bird soaring high over the Charleston peninsula isn't just paying a visit. It has made a home here.

The wood stork, an endangered species, has established maybe the largest urban breeding colony in the region in Dill Sanctuary, on the Stono River on James Island, five miles from downtown.

At least 40 breeding pairs of the wading bird roost on island trees and shoreline pines of a pond on the property, amid a horde of egrets, white ibises, herons, ducks and an occasional anhinga.

At times, the swarm is so thick that the trees look like they're covered in snow.

The bird is the only stork species native to the region. It can grow taller than 3 feet high, with 5-foot-long wings that sound a breathy "whoop-whoop" when they're flapped. Soaring, wood storks have that still grace of an eagle. They like to circle in kettles high in the air.

Incongruously, up close on the ground, the stork's wrinkly head might be uglier than the macabre vulture it's related to.

"It's not a handsome bird," said Andy Harrison dryly. Harrison is a member of

Charleston Audubon.

Like the bald eagle, the stork has become a bellwether of the potential of preserving coastal environment as the Lowcountry develops. Its success gives conservationists hope for the return of fabled wildlife such as the whooping crane, lost more than a century ago.

A generation ago the stork had all but disappeared. An estimated 40,000 breeding pairs in the Southeast in 1930 were decimated by the loss of their nesting habitat and shallow feeding waters. In 1981, only 11 pairs were counted in South Carolina.

But recent counts put the number of wood stork pairs in the state at more than 2,000, the largest colony in the United States.

In South Carolina, the birds made a comeback in the ACE Basin, an ecological preserve of 350,000 acres of the deltas of the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers in Colleton County.

The basin is prime feeding ground and has most of the breeding pairs. More than 150 pairs have established at Dungannon Plantation Heritage Preserve about 10 miles south of Charleston. They began moving into Dill several years ago.

"It's in the city limits. I don't know of any other colony that large within a city limits," said Will Post, ornithology curator at the Charleston Museum, which owns the Dill Sanctuary.

The birds have moved as far north as North Carolina from their traditional Florida grounds, where they are thought to be losing wetlands habitat to development. The Dill Sanctuary provides the birds one more foothold along that span.

"I'm glad to hear it," Harrison said.

The Dill Sanctuary is a 580-acre wildlife preserve. It is used only for museum-sponsored programs and is not open to the public. The sanctuary sits so close to James Island County Park that the storks frequent that property too.