SIBLEY — At St. Catherine Creek National Wildlife Refuge, the forecast is mostly sunny with a spot of white feathers.

Thousands of wood storks have made their annual migration from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico to the Mississippi River and surrounding wetlands. Refuge Manager Bob Strader said there are easily 1,000 wood storks at the refuge.

“They seem to come when the river’s water level starts lowering,” he said.

The storks are attracted to the Mississippi River area when the water level starts to shrink because the river leaves isolated pools where the storks can easily pick off prey, Strader said.

“They live off of small fish and crayfish,” he said. “But they will eat anything they can get their beak on.”

Strader said veterinarians conducted a study on the storks and found everything from small cans to other small trash in their stomachs.

“The birds are tactile feeders, meaning they search around in the water with their beaks until it hits something which they will grab up,” he said. “In murky water, they can’t see the difference between a small piece of plastic and a fish.”

The wood stork is the tallest of the two stork breeds in North America, Strader said, standing about a meter tall with a dark featherless head, white plumage and dark wing and tail-feathers.

“Some people call them gourd heads, like the vegetable,” Strader said. “And they do sort of look like that.”

In the mornings, he said you can find them feeding in the wetlands at the refuge.

At evening time, you can find over a thousand of them roosting at the refuge’s Cypress Swamp.

“It is pretty cool to see them all out there,” Strader said.

The St. Catherine Creek National Wildlife Refuge is located on U.S. Highway 61 South in Sibley, turn right before the Sibley Store on York Road.