Let's talk storks.
Prehistoric icons.
Taking a long walk in a large, pretty park in the centre of Amsterdam recently, I came across a closed-off area surrounded by a moat and a locked gate. Beyond, a tall pillar topped with a wide, messy nest of branches and sticks.
On the nest, a white stork.
The white stork is a brilliant creature, big and rugged with a bright red bill and spindly legs. At a glance it could be mistaken for a heron or some kind of large egret, but when it took to the air above the city it was clear it was much larger and heavier.
In flight, it seemed to hang in the air, buoyed now and then by a few beats of its powerful wings.
At one point it was joined by its partner, and they floated and bickered over the park for a long time.
I’ve never seen a stork before. Although native to the UK, with records going back hundreds of thousands of years, a combination of habitat loss through intensive farming and over hunting meant that by the 1950s it had all but vanished from the country.
Today, storks are seen but they are generally fleeting visitors from Europe where reintroduction programmes have been trying to get populations off the ground again. Things in the Netherlands seem to be going particularly well. In 2023, Amsterdam welcomed a record recent year for storks with 19 nests.
Perhaps the biggest success story of white storks in the UK is in the rewilding haven Knepp Estate in Sussex, where they have been successfully reintroduced as free-flying birds after populations were imported from Poland.
Fittingly, Sussex has a close historical relationship with the stork. Multiple place names such as Storrington, Storwood and Storgelond are inspired by the stork. Storrington’s village emblem, just a few miles from Knepp features two white storks.
Storks seem to like nesting close to people and are often found on buildings. Nesting white storks were recorded on the roof of St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh in 1416, and their arrival is perceived as bringing great fortune as they herald in the new season.
In order to reverse their own fortunes, the stork needs extensive, good quality wetland habitat to feed in. The storks from Knepp are often seen frequenting the nearby Pulborough Brooks RSPB reserve, showcasing the need to set aside land for nature if we want to see these wonderful birds widespread throughout Britain again.
Associated with fertility and new birth, it seems fitting that the white stork has become an image synonymous with nature restoration. With much of England’s countryside a barren, ecologically dead monoculture of crop, the thought of the mighty stork returning to its Sussex home can lift the spirits of even the most dour environmentalist.
I can imagine a Britain where the all the skies are bright with white feathers, and the stork’s iconic machine gun-like call echoes across healthy wetlands once more. A turning point in nature, the healing of the relationsip between humans and birds and the lands that sustain us all. A rebirth.
That is an image to cling to.