Almost every time we visit coastal Georgia, we make a point to stop by the Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge (hereafter referred to as “the Refuge”). If you haven’t been, it’s absolutely worth the trip. The Refuge hosts the largest nesting colony of wood storks in Georgia and one of the most productive rookeries in the entire southeastern United States, averaging around 450 nesting pairs each season. During nesting time, the experience feels straight out of a David Attenborough documentary: wild, noisy, and unforgettable.
This year, we were treated to an unexpected bonus: the bellows of several American alligators. While it’s not uncommon to spot alligators patrolling the waters surrounding the wood stork rookery at Woody Pond, hearing them vocalize added a new dimension to the experience. I managed to capture some of the audio on my iPhone, with the corresponding spectrogram below (data viz courtesy of the Macaulay Library and eBird).
Most of the interesting sound occurs below 1 kHz, but it can be hard to spot on the spectrogram due to the default frequency range settings of Macaulay Library and eBird.