2023-08-07 10:17:00
The storks gather for their great migration south. The enormous distance they once covered has shrunk. Although European storks still winter in southern Africa, many remain in the breeding area. Others go less far. Yet many are going on the wings. Although hundreds of storks stay ‘at home’, hundreds, if not thousands, also leave. In August you can sometimes see them swarming high in the sky: dashes once morest the sky.
In 2022, according to Sovon Bird Research, 1450 to 1650 pairs of storks were breeding in the Netherlands. More than three thousand individuals. Since then two generations have been added. Storks breed in the cities. I see them regularly above my house. They sit in rows on lampposts along highways. I even meet them in the woods.
In 1980 I visited the last inhabited stork nest with my father. The nest was near the village with the appropriate name of Grafhorst. In the meantime, there was already a stork village where they were bred. Kester Freriks tells the rescue story The storkthe latest installment in the Bird series from Atlas Contact (€24.99). He alternates ecological information regarding these legendary birds with notes regarding the stork couple and the nature around his country house. Many notes have been kept by Freriks’ lover, who dies while writing.
The intensification of agriculture has always been regarded as the main cause of the decline of storks. This intensification continues steadily: year following year the landscape becomes larger in scale. How can such a species recover? Apparently there is food to be found on modern farmland. Many prey animals have disappeared there, but sometimes certain insects, or voles, occur en masse. Storks also eat worms, moles, frogs and crayfish. Anyway, there are more storks than ever: rescue successful!
Three times a week, biologist Koos Dijksterhuis writes regarding something that grows or blooms. Read his previous Nature Diaries here.
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#storks #survive #Fidelity
