If you travel the blueway more than once, you likely become a bird watcher as well as a kayaker or canoeist. With more than 300 species of birds either passing through or living here, you just can’t quite help yourself.

Plus we’re not talking LBJs here – Little Brown Jobs. No, leave that to the Up North crowd. We’ve got showy birds, leggy birds and brightly colored birds. We’ve got shorebirds, wading birds, songbirds and birds of prey. We’ve also got wood storks, which stand out with their sheer size and 5-foot-6-inch wingspan.

This land of feathered friends sometimes is a land of feathered frenzy – in a good way, I mean. Because once these birds start nesting and talking, they really get going.

Take, for example, the wood stork.

North America’s only native stork usually stands stoically or wades carefully in still water – sometimes roadside ditches, sometimes open flats, sometimes sloughs and swamps. Birders travel to National Audubon Society’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary to see the birds and their nests.

But you can also paddle the blueway to get a cozy view.

Our Phase 3 map takes you by two mangrove islands in the Caloosahatchee that are literally loaded with the storks right now. Even if you don’t know how to ID the birds – c’mon, they’re white with long legs and that could be a lot of things around here – don’t worry. These storks are making noise right now. A kazoo-like croaking you hear well ahead of your arrival near the island.

Notice I said “near.” You want to remain 50 yards (150 feet or 45 meters) from them when you approach.

One of the islands is just upstream from the Interstate 75 Bridge over the Caloosahatchee River. You can launch at Caloosahatchee Creeks Preserve in North Fort Myers or Manatee Park in east Fort Myers for an easy paddle to hear the birds.

Another island is between the railroad trestle and the downtown Fort Myers’ Edison Bridge.

It’s worth the trip. These usually silent, bald birds make a kazoo band sound quiet when they’re around their nests. Which, by the way, look almost like band shells – they’re like a huge stick platform in a tree.