Living with the White Storks

The Russian Bird Conservation Union has declared 2004 the year of the stork.

Writer Laura Williams is fortunate to observe the birds every year in the village where she lives with her Russian husband, photographer Igor Shpilenok.

Hearing a clattering sound and batting of wings, I look up to see a large white stork landing in the nest within a 50-foot oak tree in our yard. He has just arrived in our small village in western Russia after a long flight from Africa. I say “he” because it is probably the male staking out his territory. Sure enough, soon his mate arrives. They are likely the same pair that occupied the nest last year, and the year before. They throw their heads over their backs, cocking their black-tipped wings, and beat a drum roll by clacking their long red beaks, elated at being together once again. The male stands on his mate’s back and flaps his wings to lighten the load as the pair copulates. The female tosses her head and rattles her beak. As they herald in the spring, I smile, delighted that the birds will be living with us for the warm season.

Several years ago, my husband Igor hoisted an old wagon wheel into the crown of the oak, hoping to attract the birds. He tied branches to the wheel and splattered white paint around the edge to imitate the bird’s excrement. That very year, a pair of storks occupied the nest, filling it out with their own branches and making it their home for the summer.

We are fortunate that one of Russia’s three species of storks has chosen to be our neighbor. Worldwide, there are 17 species of storks, but only the white stork, the black stork, and the Oriental stork are found in Russia. The white stork, the most common here, nests in the western part of Central Russia and in the southern Russian Far East. The rare black stork nests in remote, often swampy, forests in the southern part of the forest belt across Russia. The Oriental stork appears in small numbers in the Russian Far East. All three spend the summer nesting season in Russia and migrate to Africa or southern Asia for the winter. Only the white stork seeks out the company of humans, however, regularly nesting in rural villages on man-made telephone poles, rooftops, and water towers, as well as in trees. Often it is humans who seek out the company of storks, as in our case.

The cultures of many nations have revered storks as sacred birds since ancient times. With their spring arrival in northern latitudes, they bring warm weather and signify the beginning of a new cycle of life. Many Arabs believe that storks migrating past Mecca represent the souls of Muslims who failed to make the pilgrimage to the Holy Mosque during their lifetimes, and therefore return each year after they die in the form of white storks. In Africa, storks arrive at the beginning of the wet season, heralding much needed rain for crops and livestock. Cultures around the world believe that storks bring babies. In European folklore, storks symbolize vigilance in the fight against one’s enemies, and in many places the stork is considered a protector and benefactor of people. People consider white storks clean and pure, or “Godly” and “heavenly.” Not surprisingly, similar honor is not bestowed on their black cousins.

Many of the myths associated with white storks are grounded in tangible circumstances. White storks arrive in the North in the spring, at the time of new life. They may foster a good harvest, as insects make up a large part of their diet. I have watched many times as the birds follow closely behind a tractor or plow, pecking harmful insects from the freshly tilled soil. White storks have been known to gather by the thousands in areas of locust outbreaks. In fact, in the Afrikaans language, the stork is called the “great locust bird.” By devouring pests that devastate farm crops, storks have earned respect as birds that help ensure bounty from the fields. As a result, many rural people welcome storks as their neighbors and often erect structures to encourage the storks to build their nests nearby.

White storks in turn benefit from neighborly relations with people. The large birds require open areas with clumps of trees and numerous bodies of water. With a mature wingspan of six feet, they cannot fly in dense forests. In open areas, they comb fields for insects, small rodents and reptiles to fill out their diets. They wade for fish, frogs, and invertebrates in shallow lakes and ponds. Yet they also require large trees to hold their massive nests, which are used for many generations. (German naturalists documented a case where a nest was used by several generations of storks for 400 years.) Nests can be six feet in diameter and weigh several hundred pounds. Forests cleared for farmlands in European Russia over the past several centuries have created open areas for the storks to feed and fly, making possible the stork’s expansion into previously densely-forested areas. Human settlements also provide structures (telephone poles, buildings, water towers, platforms) for the storks’ large nests, and offer protection from potential predators. Because humans have revered storks since ancient times, they never persecuted the birds and often protected them. Thus storks gradually learned to trust people, living among them in a near symbiotic relationship.

While today the white stork seems intimately connected with the landscape of central Russia, the bird only began to occupy these parts in the past 200 years, as peasants cleared more forests for farmland. Yet Russian folklore often assumes that white storks have always been here. Likely, many beliefs associated with other birds traditionally found in European Russia, such as cranes and herons, were transposed onto the relatively recent arrivals, and folklore associated with storks was adopted from other neighboring cultures, where the birds were found historically. Now beliefs associated with storks are widespread in Russia. When my neighbor Stepan sees a stork in the spring, he jingles the change in his pocket to ensure that he will be prosperous all year long. The villagers here believe that anyone brazen enough to harm or kill stork will be severely punished and fate will take their children from them – one child for each stork they kill. On the other hand, a person who helps or saves a stork will be granted happiness and good fortune. And people believe that the family living in the house where a stork nests will be blessed with happiness and good fortune, and that all family quarrels will come to an end, the children will be healthy, and the fields will bring rich bounty.

It is therefore surprising that happiness and good fortune don’t appear to be particularly widespread in the Russian countryside, where storks reside on rooftops and telephone poles in nearly every village in the western part of central Russia. A census completed in 1995 found that there are approximately 7,400 white storks in Russia. The Russian Bird Conservation Union has declared 2004 the Year of the Stork. This year a stork census will be carried out worldwide, coordinated by the German Institute for Bird Protection and the Russian Bird Conservation Union.

I have counted as many as three pairs of storks in our small village in one year. Each summer I take joy in observing the birds and watching them raise their families. They arrive in April, sometimes together, but more often a few days or weeks apart. Males and females are thought to winter in different locations, perhaps growing weary of each other’s company and requiring separate vacations. After reconnoitering, they mate passionately and tirelessly (sometimes a dozen times a day) for several days.

Storks can live 30 years and are thought to be faithful to their mates, forming pairs for life. The female lays three to five eggs at the end of April, which she diligently incubates for as long as 34 days, waiting unflinchingly under the hot sun and pelting rain. The male brings her food and occasionally substitutes for her on the nest as she stretches her wings. Seeing him approach the nest from afar, she clicks the ends of her beak together, greeting or perhaps scolding her mate with a loud clacking sound.

Adult storks have restricted vocal chords and can only hiss and make clacking sounds with their beaks, which they often do when excited (while mating, greeting their partner, or warning off rivals). Yet they can communicate a wide range of messages with their beaks, changing meaning and intonation by speeding up the clacking interval or slowing it down, or making the noise louder or softer, longer or shorter. The birds clack with pleasure and with pain, from hunger and after a filling meal; they clack softly and reassuringly as they groom their chicks, and loudly and passionately during their mating ritual. A variety of poses also serve as communication – bird body language – to threaten an invader, demonstrate that a nest is occupied, or lovingly welcome a mate.

I am amazed at how the large birds (standing up to six feet tall) fly so effortlessly to and from the nest, flapping their broad wings only occasionally, and often soaring high in the sky. On the ground, they walk slowly and nobly, lifting their bright red legs high, and never appearing rushed as they wade in the shallow waters of the lake near our house.

After the young are born in early June, one parent remains in the nest until the chicks are large enough to defend themselves from birds of prey. They trade off hunting in the shallow waters along the lakeshore for small fish, snails, and other delicacies to feed their hungry clutch. They dribble water collected in their throats into the gaping beaks of the chicks. When it is hot, they shower the water on the chicks’ backs and spread their wings over the nest to create shade.

I sit for hours on the narrow deck skirting our banya, observing their behavior and taking notes in a little field book – how many times they change places in the nest during the day, how long each parent is away, and what they bring the chicks to eat. First they bring the chicks small insects, then gradually larger food – frogs, fish, snakes – dumping them from their beaks and throats into the nest where the chicks peck at them. As the chicks begin to stand up and move around, one parent brings long branches to the nest, affixing them at awkward angles around the edge, forming a kind of toddler rail to keep the callow chicks from falling.

By two months of age, the chicks are nearly full grown. I watch them learn to fly. First they practice flapping their wings gently in the nest, jumping up and down. Then they leap from the edge one-by-one, soaring on a maiden flight across the field, landing a few hundred yards away, free of the cramped nest for the first time. They return to the nest at night, but spend the days with their parents, hunting for food and training for their long flight south to Africa. Sometimes the entire family flies in a broad circle high up in the air. I can barely pick them out as tiny dots circling in the sky. Then they glide lower and lower and land in the nest to rest before trying again. In the second half of August they will depart on the long migration – over 5,000 miles to southern and eastern Africa – to warmer climes, joining other storks on the way. The adults return north the following spring, but the juveniles will return in two years time, when they reach reproductive age.

Occasionally, chicks fall from the high nests before they learn to fly. Sometimes they fall to their death, while other times they are unharmed or suffer broken wings or legs. And hundreds of juvenile and adult storks are killed each year when they collide with power lines, and many more break their wings and eventually die of starvation.

My husband Igor and I have cared for several stork chicks that fell out of nests and storks that were injured on power lines. As a result of our affiliation with the only conservation organization in the Bryansk oblast – the Bryansk Forest Nature Reserve, any wayward animals in the region are eventually sent to us. Over the years, we have fostered black storks, white storks, owls, moose, foxes, otters, and other animals. Many we were able to release back into the wild, while others lived with us for years, and some continue to be part of our menagerie today. Currently, we have an adult white stork and a juvenile black stork living with us in a large enclosure with a pond in our paddock. The large white stork, which may be over 20 years old, collided with power lines and broke a wing, while the black stork chick fell from its nest last year and broke a wing and a leg. We hope the white stork will fly again someday, while we know that the more severely injured black stork will remain with us for life. We feed them fish we catch in the river or buy in town and bring them frogs, worms, and other creatures we happen upon.

Igor once adopted a stork chick that had been “arrested” by the local police. The young black stork probably fell out of its nest, but escaped injury. In any event, it wandered into a nearby town, where it was spellbound by its reflection in the large window of the town bank. It began to peck at the window, setting off the alarm. The police arrived to find only a frightened black bird and took it back to the station. There they contacted Igor at the nature reserve and asked him to pick it up. Igor raised the chick that summer, keeping it at a remote ranger station in the heart of the reserve. In August, the bird took to the skies, joining other black storks for the flight south. Two years later, on its first return north for the nesting season, the grateful bird returned to the cabin for a brief visit, then found a mate and settled down to nest in the nearby woods.

Fortunately, the wild storks nesting in our yard aren’t bothered by the stragglers we keep in the enclosure below. One morning, as summer draws to a close, I come out of the house to find that the wild storks are gone. They left no note, no forwarding address. They just flew away and never looked back. They set out for their respective wintering grounds in sub-Saharan Africa, where they will bathe in sunshine and have plenty to eat all winter long. Only our injured storks remain to suffer out the cold winter months under the heat lamp in our henhouse.

But I take heart in the fact that next spring the great white birds will return to inhabit the nest in our yard once again, bringing us (we hope) happiness and a bountiful harvest. After having been apart for nearly eight months, surely the stork couple will be happy too, reuniting to recreate their family. Perhaps it is only my imagination, but when I watch the stork pair rejoin each spring, greeting each other with passionate clacking sounds and excited gestures, I am sure that they truly rejoice in seeing each other after winter’s long separation. They seem to know that all is well and their species will go on. RL