In Polish countryside pretty much every village has several frames for storks to build their nests on. People build them on their roofs or on utility poles, and some utility companies do that too. It's best to build it a meter or more over the base to protect the nest from predators and electricity.
Also I've never seen a stork feeding in a swamp as they wrote in this article, but I've seen plenty of times storks walking behind a tractor plowing a field. They wait for the farmer to dig up the ground and eat the larva of insects uncovered by the tractors.
They also catch frogs and mice on regular fields. Don't need to be a bog. That's probably why farmers love them.
> They also catch frogs and mice on regular fields. Don't need to be a bog. That's probably why farmers love them.
Right you are, but still, the natural habitat which they are adapted to with their long legs, beak and neck is wetlands. Of course, if they can find plenty of food in a freshly ploughed field, they will take that too, but so will many other birds (crows etc.).
I think farmers love them because of their association with peace and prosperity.
Compare to the idea that sparrows in a barn are good luck — I think the causation is the other way around: if you are prosperous enough that you can be feeding your horses better than bare subsistence, there will be undigested grains in their manure, and sparrows come live in your barn.
Similarly, storks, being near the top of their food chain and migratory, probably prefer to nest in villages when there are large* numbers of people plowing regularly, but prefer unpopulated swamps when war or other disturbance has significantly reduced the local agricultural activity?
Yes*. What bugs don't explain would be the difference between "unlucky" and "lucky". We have horses on different rations in our barn, and as far as I can tell, they all attract about the same number of bugs, but the sparrows tend to hang out way more with the ones on richer rations than they do with the ones on leaner.
* eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41215084 (and I'm also aware that sparrows in winter appreciate half a kilowatt of heat per large animal, which is also independent of ration)
And if anyone lives nearby (Sussex, UK) and wants to get involved in something like this, the Sussex Wildlife Trust are almost always looking for volunteers: https://sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/get-involved/volunteer Once you get into volunteering for SWT you'll hear about opportunities to volunteer on lots of other projects like Weald to Waves - https://www.wealdtowaves.co.uk/ - and Knepp.
That that movie is by Isabella Tree is such a great example of nominative determinism.
And she was adopted by aristocrats! So aristocrates have done something selfless and generous in their lives, I'd've never guessed. Good on `em.
Snark aside, her mother, Lady Anne Tree is evidently a very fine human being who understood that her being born into wealth gave her the opportunity (or, perhaps, even, responsibility) to help others, which she did, apparently magnificently.
I visit Knepp a few times a year. There’s a great circular loop you can walk, and I’ve seen plenty of trees with stork nests—an amazing sight to see firsthand.
I’m in a rural area of The Netherlands (for as far as there’s anything rural here), and storks wreak absolute havoc on the meadow birds, to the point where they are disappearing. Storks are intelligent menaces and absolutely ruthless.
This story is such a cool example of how rewilding can really work. Turning the land from intensive farming into a more natural space gave the storks exactly what they needed to thrive—and it’s amazing to see them breeding there for the first time in centuries!
It makes me wonder what other places could do if they rethought how land is used. Projects like this don’t just help wildlife but also bring life and energy back to these areas. Plus, it’s such a great blend of preserving history and building something new for the future. Would love to see more efforts like this popping up around the world.
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Also I've never seen a stork feeding in a swamp as they wrote in this article, but I've seen plenty of times storks walking behind a tractor plowing a field. They wait for the farmer to dig up the ground and eat the larva of insects uncovered by the tractors.
They also catch frogs and mice on regular fields. Don't need to be a bog. That's probably why farmers love them.
Right you are, but still, the natural habitat which they are adapted to with their long legs, beak and neck is wetlands. Of course, if they can find plenty of food in a freshly ploughed field, they will take that too, but so will many other birds (crows etc.).
Compare to the idea that sparrows in a barn are good luck — I think the causation is the other way around: if you are prosperous enough that you can be feeding your horses better than bare subsistence, there will be undigested grains in their manure, and sparrows come live in your barn.
Similarly, storks, being near the top of their food chain and migratory, probably prefer to nest in villages when there are large* numbers of people plowing regularly, but prefer unpopulated swamps when war or other disturbance has significantly reduced the local agricultural activity?
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oCoVXcZ59Q (chorus: "Stork on the roof / Peace on Earth")
* just like autism causes vaccines, babies bring the storks?
are you aware that sparrows eat bugs, and farms have bugs?
* eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41215084 (and I'm also aware that sparrows in winter appreciate half a kilowatt of heat per large animal, which is also independent of ration)
There are also a couple of books:
https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/wilding-the-return-of-nature...
https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-book-of-wilding-a-practi...
And if anyone lives nearby (Sussex, UK) and wants to get involved in something like this, the Sussex Wildlife Trust are almost always looking for volunteers: https://sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/get-involved/volunteer Once you get into volunteering for SWT you'll hear about opportunities to volunteer on lots of other projects like Weald to Waves - https://www.wealdtowaves.co.uk/ - and Knepp.
And she was adopted by aristocrats! So aristocrates have done something selfless and generous in their lives, I'd've never guessed. Good on `em.
Snark aside, her mother, Lady Anne Tree is evidently a very fine human being who understood that her being born into wealth gave her the opportunity (or, perhaps, even, responsibility) to help others, which she did, apparently magnificently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Anne_Tree
Once one's heart is opened to the joy of helping others, there is no end to the creative, excellent endeavors we can undertake.
Qed
It makes me wonder what other places could do if they rethought how land is used. Projects like this don’t just help wildlife but also bring life and energy back to these areas. Plus, it’s such a great blend of preserving history and building something new for the future. Would love to see more efforts like this popping up around the world.