Birdwatch: white storks return to UK after 600-year absence
I find these huge birds fascinating and often marvel at how they live cheek by jowl with people in European cities. If we end up with more of them to look at across rural England I for one will be very pleased to add them to my list of dynamic charismatic mega fauna! This story tells us:
The sound was both primeval yet utterly fresh and new: a time-travelling throwback to the middle ages; yet, at the same time, a portent of a brighter future for our rural landscape.
Like a rapid burst of machine-gun fire, the bill-clapping of a white stork is – in nature’s terms – simply a signal that the bird is displaying to its mate. But for me, it also has a deep cultural resonance: as if the stork is celebrating its belated return to the British scene, after a gap of more than 600 years.
First one, then two, then a dozen of these striking black-and-white birds rose into the warm morning air on their broad wings. But this wasn’t in France, Spain or Poland, where I have watched them in the past, but in West Sussex: at the Knepp Wildland Project.