Storks
Storks are large, long-legged, long-necked wading birds with long, stout bills.
The storks are carnivorous, it eats reptiles, small mammals, insects, fish, amphibians and other
small invertebrates
The storks vary in their tendency towards migration.This bird takes long annual migrations in the
winter.
The routes taken by these species have developed to avoid long distance travel across water
between Europe, Asia, Africa
Twice a year, more than half a million storks take to their 12,000 kilometer migration route between
Europe and Africa Middle East.
Young birds could lack the ‘know-how’ to maintain themselves during spring migration, it means that
they take more time required to gain the experience necessary to successfully complete spring
migration and arrive on the breeding grounds in condition to breed
Migrating flocks, weak and exhausted by their epic journey, are particularly vulnerable to collision
with overhead powerlines and the threat of illegal shooting along their migration routes.
Storks taking the eastern route across the African-Eurasian flyway risk a highly dangerous crossing
over Lake Qaraoun – an illegal shooting blackspot in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley. At the height of
migration season, hundreds of thousands of storks soar over Lebanese skies within a few short
days. Every year, many thousands make it no further.
Storks - migratory birds. In August flight, guided by instinct,Storks - migratory birds. In August flight,
guided by instinct, begin to reach to the South.
White Storks form loose informal colonies while breeding. Several pairs may nest closely together
within sight and sound of one another while appearing completely oblivious to their neighbors. Nine
pairs have shared one rooftop in Spain. Though storks form monogamous pairs for the duration of
the breeding season, they do not migrate or over-winter together. If the same pair reforms in
successive years it is largely due to their strong attachment to their nest site.
Power lines cause a good number of stork deaths every year. The proliferation of power lines
near the places where the stork nests or feeds, regardless of the proximity of the birds, is the
main cause. Two types of accidents occur on power lines: electrocution and collision
Destruction of nests
Sometimes these birds are accused of being the cause of the deterioration of the roofs, but in
most of time, the ruin of the buildings is due to their own poor state of conservation.
Contamination of the rivers
The contamination of the water of rivers and ponds is dangerous for the stork, because its diet
is closely linked to humid areas, both fluvial and lagoon. The intoxicated fish, amphibians and
aquatic invertebrates will contaminate their predators in a chain.
WHITE STORK (Ciconia ciconia)
Description: White Storks are tall (1 m., 2.3-4.4 kg) long-necked wading birds with
long bare red legs and a straight pointed red bill. The white plumage of the head,
neck, and body contrasts with the black wing feathers highlighted with a sheen of
purple and green iridescence. The contour feathers of the lower neck and chest are
elongated to form a fluffy ruff that can be erected during courtship displays. A small
patch of bare black skin surrounds their brown eyes. Sexes are similar in appearance,
though males are slightly larger.
Though storks are considered to be largely silent birds, most species perform some
variety of a bill-clattering display. This display reaches its most advanced form in the
White Stork. They begin by throwing their heads straight back to create an amplifying
resonance box in the gular pouch of the lower neck. As they clatter their upper and
lower mandibles together rapidly they produce a loud machine-gun-like rattle that
rises and falls in pace.
Distribution and Habitat: The European subspecies of the White Stork breeds in
several discontinuous populations across much of Europe, the Middle East and west-
central Asia. They are found in southern Portugal and western Spain; along the
northern coast of Africa in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria; in The Netherlands and
southern Denmark west to St. Petersburg and the Gulf of Finland, south to Turkey,
northern Greece, the former Yugoslavia, and Azerbaijan. A very small population
breeds in extreme southern Africa in Cape Province, South Africa.
Storks are large birds that rely heavily on energy efficient soaring flight during
migration. Soaring requires the presence of thermal air currents that are not found
over water. White Storks are therefore reluctant to fly across large bodies of water
such as the Mediterranean Sea to reach their wintering grounds in tropical Africa.
They solve this problem by having the bulk of the European population split into two
distinct migratory routes. Western birds cross the Mediterranean at the Straits of
Gibraltar, while most of the eastern birds cross the Bosporus and circle around the
Mediterranean through the Middle East. Migration is highly synchronized and flocks
contain as many as 11,000 individuals. Birds migrating from Denmark to South Africa
and back again may cover a total distance of 20,000 km. Small numbers of birds cross
the Mediterranean directly by flying south from the southern tips of Italy and Greece.
Some western European White Storks join the Asiatic subspecies C. ciconia asiatica
to winter in India.
Wintering birds may congregate in large numbers as they utilize a locally abundant
food source such as locust or grasshopper swarms. One hundred thousand white storks
were reported in one 25 km2 area in Tanzania during a severe infestation of army-
worms. These wintering birds occupy dry savannahs and open grasslands but tend to
congregate around lakes, ponds, and rivers.
Breeding: White Storks prefer lowland open habitats of wet pastures, flooded
meadows, and shallow lakes and marshes with scattered trees for roosting and nesting.
They have adapted to nest on man-made structures and forage in freshly plowed
fields.
Diet: White Storks are highly opportunistic feeders who will consume a wide variety
of prey items including insects, frogs, toads, tadpoles, fish, rodents, snakes, lizards,
earthworms, mollusks, crustaceans, and, rarely, the chicks or eggs of ground-nesting
birds. Foraging storks search for prey visually while walking deliberately with bill
pointed toward the ground. When prey is spotted, they cock their necks back, then jab
the bill forward to grasp their victim. Wintering birds in Africa will congregate around
the edges of grass-fires to capture small prey fleeing the flames.
Reproduction: White Storks form loose informal colonies while breeding. Several
pairs may nest closely together within sight and sound of one another while appearing
completely oblivious to their neighbors. Nine pairs have shared one rooftop in Spain.
Though storks form monogamous pairs for the duration of the breeding season, they
do not migrate or over-winter together. If the same pair reforms in successive years it
is largely due to their strong attachment to their nest site.
Males usually arrive at the nest-site first. A male will greet a newly arriving female
with the Head-Shaking Crouch display, as he lowers himself on the nest into the
incubating posture, erects his neck ruff and shakes his head from side to side. If the
male accepts the new arrival as his mate they will cement their pair bond with an Up-
Down display. In this display the birds hold their wings away from their sides and
pump their heads up and down. This is often accompanied by bill-clattering. Shorter
courtships may indicate that the male and female were paired in previous years.
Nests are huge, bulky affairs constructed of branches and sticks and lined with twigs,
grasses, sod, rags, and paper. Though they may be reused year after year, breeding
birds will add to the structure each season. Particularly old nests have grown to over 2
m in diameter and nearly 3 m in depth. Some nests have been in continuous use for
hundreds of years. Both sexes participate in nest construction with the male bringing
most of the material. Completion of the structure is often signaled by the addition of
one leafy branch to the edge of the nest.
European Storks have been building their nests on man-made structures since the
Middle Ages. They can be found on rooftops, towers, chimneys, telephone-poles,
walls, haystacks, and specially constructed nest towers. Many homeowners will add
embellishments such as wooden wagon wheels to old chimneys to encourage storks to
nest on their houses. Nests can also be found in trees, on cliff-ledges, or occasionally
on the ground. (The street lamps of Sofia seem to be attractive as well, see cover.)
The female usually lays 3-5 eggs, more rarely up to seven. Parents share incubation
duties for 33-34 days. Young chicks are covered with white down and have black
bills. Both parents feed the young on the nest until they fledge at 8-9 weeks of age.
Fledglings may continue to return to the nest site each evening to beg for food from
their parents. Young birds reach sexual maturity in their fourth year. Banding records
indicate that wild birds can live and reproduce successfully past 30 years of age.
Conservation: The overall population of White Storks has declined steadily over the
last half century. The decline in Western Europe has been the most pronounced.
Pollution, pesticides and wetlands drainage have severely reduced suitable foraging
habitat across the breeding range. Storks no longer breed in southern Sweden,
Switzerland, western France, Belgium or southern Greece. In The Netherlands the
number of breeding pairs has declined from 500 in 1910 to 5 in 1985. Denmark was
home to 4000 pairs in 1890, but only 12 in 1989. Captive propagation and
reintroduction efforts have been hampered by their tendency to produce overly tame
birds, which over-winter in Europe without migrating normally.
The legend that the European White Stork brings babies is believed to have originated
in northern Germany, perhaps because storks arrive on their breeding grounds nine
months after midsummer. Northern Europeans of Teutonic ancestry encouraged storks
to nest on their homes hoping they would bring fertility and prosperity. Hans Christian
Andersen's fairy tale "The Storks", you may find
at http://hca.gilead.org.il/storks.html
Though White Storks are protected by popular opinion over most of their range, they
are persecuted in other areas. Large migrating flocks circling the western end of the
Mediterranean are vulnerable to shooting in Syria and Lebanon, where several
thousand are killed each year. They are also subject to hunting pressure in many parts
of Africa, where their large size and tendency to flock in large numbers make them
attractive targets. The great locust swarms of tropical Africa that provided sustenance
for wintering birds have been largely reduced through modern pest control efforts.
Drought in the Sahel and chronic overgrazing has also contributed to poorer wintering
habitat and lower survival rates. Birds that do manage to arrive safely back in Europe
are often in sub-optimal condition at the start of the crucial and demanding breeding
season.
Conservation efforts that focus on the preservation of ecosystems and biodiversity
seem to hold the most promise for halting the decline of this and other stork species.
History of storks in Europe: Several thousand years ago, when the end of last ice
age was approaching and the habitat suitable for storks was expanding, the birds
moved north from Africa, and presumably the Balkans and Iberian Peninsula, where
they stayed during the ice age.
A few thousand years ago, when the great part of Europe was covered with dense
forest, there were few storks here. They inhabited muddy surroundings of lakes,
meadows and marshes in the valleys of big rivers. Once trees started to grow on these
areas, birds moved on to look for a different meadow or river valley.
The situation changed when agriculture developed in Europe, forests were cut down
and pastures and cultivation areas expanded significantly. In ancient Greece and
Rome storks inhabited agricultural areas and built nests on top of buildings. In
Western Europe great forests disappeared in early Middle Ages. In Poland the process
took place between 12th and 16th century (at first in Silesia and Greater Poland, then
in the north-east parts of the country). While the areas of meadows and pastures were
getting larger and larger, more and more storks started coming to breed in Poland.
However, the times of prosperity for storks came to an end when human intervention
in natural environment was no longer favourable for these birds. Draining meadows,
river control, standardization and impoverishment of landscape linked with
progressive industrialization deprived storks of attractive habitat areas.
The last stork nest in Great Britain was deserted in 1416. In that time the settlement
started in Eastern Poland and Latvia. Storks moved eastward. This process continued
for centuries. In 19th and 20th centuries storks began to leave western Europe. Within
last 100 years storks have almost disappeared from northern France, Belgium,
Holland, Denmark, western and southern Germany. During some seasons there was
not a single stork in Sweden and Switzerland.
Nowadays, there are fewer than 10 breeding pairs in Holland (in 1958 there were 56
pairs, and in 1910 - 500 pairs), in Denmark there are 9 pairs (in 1890 there were 4
thousand pairs). Within last decades storks started to build their nests north-east from
Sankt Petersburgh and in the vicinity of Moscow and Voronezh.
Stork in beliefs, culture and history: In ancient Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria,
Muslim countries of the Middle East and Morocco it was believed that storks
incarnate the dead or humans undergoing some mysterious transformations. Greek
philosopher Pithagoras (572-497 BCE) claimed that storks impersonate the souls of
dead poets, while the historian Plutarch (45-125 AD) recorded the case of a man
sentenced to death in Thessaly for killing a stork. This could be linked with the belief
that stork is partly human.
In Arabic world popular is the conviction that storks incarnate the souls of dead
Muslims, who did not managed to fulfill their duty of pilgrimage to Mekka. Thus they
take this journey in the body of a bird. This is why Muslims feel great respect towards
storks, and killing them is equal to killing a man.
However, this tradition of showing respect to storks leads to the story of anti-stork
actions. When Greece was occupied by the Turkish Empire, the Turks introduced the
law, which ordered to protect stork nests. Thus, unintentionally they made a stork a
symbol of the occupant. When the uprising broke out in 1821, victorious Greeks in the
acts of revenge got rid of stork nests. Not a single nest remained in Athens, Patras and
Seres. The stork also appeared to be an anti-symbol in Ukraine. When the Bolshevic
activists started to "modernize" the countryside, they destroyed stork nest, which they
found a symbol of poverty and backwardness.
Storks had more luck in Moldavia, where thanks to a local legend they became a
symbol of vine growers and wine producers. According to the legend, a stork saved
the besieged fortress from defeat, when it brought the grapevines for the defenders.
Once they ate the grapes they managed to ward off the enemy.
Inhabitants of different parts of Europe used to find stork a bird which brings luck,
prosperity, bumper crop. For example, the Dutch name of the stork - ooievaar - comes
from old German odobero - bringing luck (ode - luck, baren - bring). It is also
believed that stork's nest placed on the roof protects the building from a clap of
thunder. This superstition, however, was not confirmed by the facts - about 3 percent
of stork nestlings are killed by a thunder. The most famous naturalist of the ancient
Greece, Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was convinced that storks, that disappear
somewhere in autumn, hibernate throughout winter. Later, it was also believed that
smaller bird species travel to Africa on the back of the migrating storks.
Storks in Yorks - Rare birds nest after 600-year absence: On Thursday April 22,
2004, Martin Wainwright write about that in The Guardian: Cartwheels are being
dusted down by bird enthusiasts after the discovery that two white storks are trying to
nest in Britain for the first time in nearly 600 years.
Word has shot round the birdwatching community about sightings of the migrants
mating and gathering sticks between housing estates and a Yorkshire motorway.
known British nesting attempt since 1416. In that year, only months after Henry V's
defeat of the French at the battle of Agincourt, storks successfully fledged chicks on
St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh.
Familiar in eastern Europe, where cartwheels are fixed to telegraph poles and
chimneys to encourage nests, storks are rare visitors to Britain. Usually blown off
course, both the white and black varieties seldom notch up more than a handful of
sightings every decade.
"They've aroused a lot interest in the area and we just hope that whatever they do, they
won't be subject to disturbance," said John McLoughlin of the North East Birdline
information service. "In Europe storks are regarded as good luck."
Storks are one of the biggest of Britain's exotic bird "vagrants", with long, gawky legs
and sharp, extended bills. Most sightings are escapees from wildlife parks but the
Yorkshire pair, which have settled in the Calder valley near Wakefield, have rings
which indicate that they come from Europe.
"We aren't sure of their background yet but the rings suggest they may have originated
from France, Switzerland or Italy," Mr McLoughlin said.
ISRAEL: August 25, 2004
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
JERUSALEM - Some 200 storks migrating from Europe to Africa flew to their deaths
in Israel Monday, landing in an acid-filled pool of waste outside a chemical plant,
veterinary officials said.
Media reports said the chemical dump, in the southern town of Dimona, is covered
during the migration season to prevent such accidents but the storks made their
stopover in Israel early this year.
