Specifically, Ibis select highquality foraging patches that they then abandon relatively quickly once prey availability drops, whereas egrets tend to remain at foraging sites even when prey densities are low. Although both species select different foraging habitats nest survival for both species is similarly influenced by hydrological conditions and prey availability. Furthermore, Hg concentrations differ between egrets and ibises in the Florida Everglades, which is likely a function of their foraging ecology and prey selection. Herein, we assessed the Y-27632 dihydrochloride physiological response of juvenile egrets and ibis to changing prey availability, hydrology, and mercury exposure. We measured physiological biomarkers and body condition for egret and ibis nestlings in two consecutive years that differed greatly in hydrologic conditions, prey availability, and Hg exposure. Additionally, we measured physiological biomarkers of environmental stressors that manifest across a range of different time frames. In particular, we used measures of physiological condition that we expected would represent a temporal continuum of responses relative to the age of wading bird chicks in our study, including a body-condition index, fecal corticosterone metabolites, and heat shock proteins 60 and 70. Corticosterone is a hormone that serves as a signal to modify both behavior and metabolism during a period of acute stress. Corticosterone is released by the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis into the blood stream when birds experience acute stress, facilitating a rapid response to overcome the stressor. Variation in CORT levels in waterbirds have been correlated with a variety of factors including prey availability, Hg exposure, and changing hydrological conditions. In contrast, heat shock proteins are highly conserved molecular chaperones that function to maintain optimal cell function and homeostasis by being amplified through up-regulation during periods of stress to minimize cell protein damage. Elevated heat shock proteins are commonly associated with responses to damage associated with heavy metals including Hg, decreased food availability, and rapid changes in hydrological conditions at foraging sites for birds. In order to better understand the potential conservation implications of exposure to multiple environmental stressors we simultaneously tested those effects on these physiological biomarkers and chick body condition. Different environmental stressors were associated with different time frames and biomarkers of physiological condition in egret and ibis chicks. The short and moderate time frame markers, chick body condition and FCORT, respectively, were correlated with landscape variables such as prey biomass and water depth, whereas there was no measurable effect of Hg. In contrast, the long-term physiological markers were not influenced by any of the measured landscape stressors, but one was influenced by Hg concentration. One potential confounding aspect in our study is the fact that the same hydrology variables used to define the landscape stressors that we tested to determine their influence on physiological condition are also know to influence concentrations of Hg in egret and ibis adults and chicks. Previously, Herring et al. found that water depths and recession rates.