White Stork

Can be confused withSource

• Grey Heron — Grey Heron flies with the neck folded into an S against the body; the stork holds it straight out. The heron is also grey rather than black-and-white, with a yellow bill instead of red.
• Eurasian Spoonbill — Spoonbill also flies with the neck extended, but is smaller, wholly white with no black in the wing, and has black legs and a flat, spoon-tipped bill.

Plumage and variationSource

Juvenile: The immature's bill is a duller red with a dark tip, where the adult's is red throughout.

VoiceSource

Has no real voice. At the nest it produces instead a characteristic clattering, by knocking the upper and lower mandibles together in rapid time.

BehaviourSource

Builds its large nest on rooftops, telegraph poles and other human structures. Feeds in bogs and on fields and meadows, stalking slowly and taking mice, moles, frogs, earthworms and insects. Both parents incubate and feed, regurgitating food onto the nest floor. The last-hatched young often fail to get enough and, once weakened, are killed and eaten by their older siblings.

When and whereSource

An extremely rare Danish breeder and Critically Endangered on the 2019 Red List, with fewer than 50 mature individuals. The population collapsed from the mid-1800s, when several thousand pairs bred here, chiefly through the draining and cultivation of wetlands; by 1970 there were 60 pairs, and in 2001 no young fledged from a Danish stork nest for the first time. A few pairs have returned since: 10 pairs in 2023 and 8 pairs raising 15 fledged young in 2024. Some of the birds stem from the Swedish release project in Scania; DOF does not itself recommend releasing captive-bred storks. Danish storks migrate either south-east around the Mediterranean to east and southern Africa, or south-west over Gibraltar to west Africa.

Facts

RelativesSource