Birders at Phoenix Tres Rios Wetlands recently spotted a bird that is almost never seen in Arizona

In a quiet corner of southwest Phoenix, a rare visitor rested his wings.

Earlier this month, birders marveled at a surprise appearance by a wood stork, a bird that is almost never seen in Arizona. Photos of the wading bird, with its white feathers, spindly legs and long, orange beak, made the rounds on social media.

The stork was spotted at Tres Rios Wetlands in Phoenix, a unique 700-acre section of wet, marshy habitat created with cleaned-up discharge from a nearby wastewater treatment plant. The city of Phoenix says the area is home to more than 150 different species of birds and animals like muskrats, raccoons, skunks, coyotes, bobcats and beavers.

The area is designed to host migrating birds by recreating some of the wetland habitats that existed in the Salt River during the early 1800s, before it was dammed and diverted for farming in the growing Phoenix area.

By stopping to wade in the Tres Rios Wetlands area, the juvenile wood stork was far outside of its usual range. The largest section of its habitat is in South America — including Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and parts of Argentina. Some wood storks also live in Cuba and the Florida Everglades. Typically, the bird breeds in coastal portions of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

Its nonbreeding habitat extends up through coastal Mexico, on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the country, with a small patch of known habitat in Southern California.

Arizona birders say the bird has only been seen in the state a handful of times in the past 25 years.

Many important bird migration routes run through the Southwest. From Mexico to downtown Phoenix, environmental groups have worked to restore once-lush sections of riverbed that have run dry in the 21st century, providing important stopovers for birds on long seasonal journeys between North and South America.