Wood Stork

How to find it

Wood Storks look for places where the water level has dropped and fish are concentrated, so check shrinking pools and lagoon edges in Guanacaste. Start at Palo Verde, where the bird is on the list for the dry tropical forest zone of the national bird route, which also covers Barra Honda and the Gulf of Nicoya mangroves. Late in the dry season, look around Río Frío. Boat tours run along the Río Frío, where Wood Storks are among the birds visitors can see. Do not count on it away from Guanacaste and the Gulf of Nicoya, where it wanders erratically.

How to recognise it

Size comes first: a very large, mostly white wader about 102 cm long.

Look for these marks:

- black flight feathers

- a bare, rough, black head and neck

- a thick dark bill that curves down slightly at the tip

- long legs

Close up, the bare, wrinkled, vulture-like head stands out. Young birds have the head and neck covered in greyish down instead of bare black skin.

In flight it soars with neck and legs stretched out, showing broad wings that are black along the rear edge. That dark trailing edge is one of the easiest marks to pick out overhead.

What it sounds like

Recording: Lyndsey, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

The Wood Stork eats mostly fish, with crustaceans, insects and amphibians as extras. It wades in open wetlands, and groups work together to catch food.

It walks slowly through shallow water with its bill held down in the water, feeling for fish and crustaceans. In the freshwater and brackish lagoons of Guanacaste, flocks feed together on small fish.

It roosts and nests in colonies in trees over standing water. Breeding birds build a thin platform of sticks.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica the Wood Stork lives in fresh and salt water habitats, including mangroves, estuaries, marshes and the edges of lakes, streams and rivers.

It nests in dense colonies in mangroves or other trees standing in water, at an average height of about 2.5 m.

It is found along both coasts and across much of the north, and is locally common to abundant in Guanacaste. It is often numerous in the Gulf of Nicoya. Outside Guanacaste and the Gulf of Nicoya it is a fairly scarce, erratic wanderer in the lowlands of both slopes and the Central Valley.

When to see it

Breeding runs from November to March, peaking in December. One northern lowland wildlife refuge, reached by boat, is listed as having its peak of waterbirds from January to March, with the Wood Stork among its key species.

Similar birds

Great Egret is also a large white wader, but it has no black on the wings. The Wood Stork's black flight feathers and bare dark head separate the two, and it often mixes with white herons and egrets. The Jabiru is the one big Costa Rican stork likely to be confused with it: taller and heavier, with a red neck band, all-white wings and a slightly upturned bill. Wood Storks feed in groups, while Jabirus are usually alone or in pairs.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans call it cigüeña, garzón, guairón, sargento and cigüeñón. The AOCR list uses Cigüeñón, with Garzón, Guairón and Cigüeña in brackets. The Real Academia Española marks cigüeñón as a word used in Costa Rica and Mexico, and lists sargento, tántalo and tuyuyú as other names. Its English name used to be Wood Ibis.

Status and conservation

The official Costa Rican list marks the Wood Stork as resident and migratory (R,M), and it is locally common to abundant in Guanacaste.

Photography tips

Shrinking pools and lagoon edges concentrate fish and the storks that follow them, so they can be easier to approach by eye there. A Jabiru landing beside a group of Wood Storks gives an easy size comparison, as the storks look small next to it.