A bird that hasn’t stepped foot in Berks County in 125 years dropped into the Saucony Creek, setting off a rush of enthusiastic birders to the Richmond Township waterway.
A juvenile wood stork, a bird of the southern coasts, was spotted Thursday and photographed foraging in the creek along Crystal Cave Road by Trevor Stutzman.
He posted the photograph to eBird and social media, creating a birding stir throughout eastern Pennsylvania.
The stork was still being seen Monday..
On Saturday, Carl Jacobs drove an hour from his home in Bath, Northampton County, to photograph the bird.
“It’s just an unusual bird to be here,” he said as he stood with a group of other birders on the open-grate bridge that carries Crystal Cave Road over the Saucony Creek. “Then it becomes a challenge to find it. But he’s been hanging around for I guess three days now. Makes it a little easier. He’s in an area that’s fairly easy to find.”
Jacobs photographed the stork as it foraged in the Saucony, kicking up crayfish, its preferred food in the creek, and grabbing some fish with its long, powerful beak.
Rudy Keller, compiler of Berks County birds for the local Baird Ornithological Club and the Pennsylvania Society for Ornithology, watched the stork late Thursday in the rain and paid particular attention to its feeding behavior.
A wood stork, a rare visitor from the South, catches a fish in the Saucony Creek in Richmond Township on Saturday. (Courtesy of Carl R. Jacobs)
“The stork walked along, and it would stir with its feet,” he said, “with its beak partway into the water because apparently it’s sensitive — the tip of it.”
The stork would either swish its beak around or use its feet to stir the bottom up, Keller said.
“That of course would scare crayfish,” he said, “and then if it can’t see it, if the water’s turbid from that, the bill might detect the movement or feel it, and get them that way.”
Keller noted that birds like storks, particularly juveniles, will engage in a post-natal dispersal that takes them wildly out of their normal range.
Joe Beatrice of Muhlenberg Township couldn’t resist the opportunity to put the bird on his Berks and Pennsylvania lists.
“Thought I’d get out and give it a shot today,” he said from the bridge on Saturday.
Brian Lineaweaver of Wernersville, one of the more active birders in Berks, photographed the bird in the rain late Thursday and returned Saturday for more photo ops.
Birders stand on a bridge over the Saucony Creek in Richmond Township to catch a glimpse of the rare wood stork on Saturday. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
Lineaweaver also enjoys the camaraderie of other birders that these rare sightings bring out.
“It’s running into some people you see only two or three times a year at places like this,” he said. “You kind of intersect a couple times a year to catch up. It reminds me of Cape May, where a bunch of guys are pulled over and all the cameras are coming out.”
According to records kept by the Baird Ornithological Club, the only previous Berks record is one that was found dead in Albany Township on Nov. 11, 1921, and given to Dr. Stanley Brunner of Krumsville, who had an interest in collecting birds for a Victorian bird tableau. The wood stork was the centerpiece of his collection that was housed beginning in 1966 in the former Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Culture Museum in Lenhartsville.
The current owner of the building, contacted on Saturday during the community yard sale held there, said the collection was sold at a sportsman’s auction in Bethel in the early 2020s.
According to Pennsylvania Birds, that Albany Township stork is the first state record for that species in the 20th century.
The only other local record is one seen flying over Hawk Mountain on Sept. 6, 2023.
Throughout the day Saturday, cars crept along the roads bordering the Saucony Creek with eyes peeled for the tall, white bird with black wingtips and enormous beak.
“This is really cool,” Lineaweaver said from the bridge. “When’s the next time you’re going to see a wood stork?”
The rare wood stork alights on the Saucony Creek in Richmond Township on Saturday. (Courtesy of Carl R. Jacobs)