COUNTRY MATTERS
Happy clapper stork is top of the bill Joe Kennedy
WHITE storks will carry sodden moss from estuaries in their bills to squeeze water into the mouths of their thirsty nestlings.
These laid-back, billclapping birds, with black flight feathers, which build great nests of sticks on abandoned factory chimneys and church roofs, are considered exemplary parents.
I went to look for a lone bird I had encountered last year after its world had come crashing down. Red palm tree weevils were the culprits, having over the years bored through the base of a formidable trunk after a century of life in a formal garden.
This palm was one of three planted by a trader or sea captain at a palatial mansion, long abandoned in a one-time industrial town. It had crashed down through a tangle of undergrowth and lay amid the strewn fruits from orange and lemon trees.
I had seen the bird through the chained gates of the house of bricked-up windows and stone-stepped grand entrance. It had retreated to a refuge on another tree while an elderly man was slowly reducing the fallen mass to firewood with an axe and saw.
On subsequent days I had watched the unsettled bird try to accustom itself to its new perch, with hope of attracting a companion. But this was an odd place for a nest — as it was too low with walls masking the pole-like palms of massive trunks.
This week I returned to a desolate scene — the grounds wild again, the fallen tree cut up and removed and few fruits hanging. There was no sign of the stork.
In this town, storks’ nests are conspicuous on the tops of red-bricked chimneys of former fish canning factories, demolished for new apartments and open spaces.
The chimneys are protected by a law so that the nesting birds cannot be disturbed. MASTER STORK: The wading bird makes its presence felt by Their larder vista is the estuary and marshes with frogs, snakes and small fish for food.
The great mute birds, like sentinels at their posts, make their presence known by clapping their bills, making an odd carrying sound reminiscent of an old-style soccer fans’ rattle.
The birds come and appear to have quiet domesticated lives, changing places at the nest, with one standing watch. In the steppe-like countryside of Alentejo, they build nests on poles while beneath sparrows build in the shelter.
White storks and their less numerous all-black relatives, breed in colonies throughout Spain and Portugal and, sparsely, in some northern European countries. They do not breed in Ireland or Britain, though once a pair nested on St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh. Most Iberians migrate to Africa, via Gibraltar, though some remain to be seen during balmy autumn days.
They are used to mankind and he is kind to them in turn, providing, in towns, old cartwheels on rooftops as nest sites.
Storks are the stuff of folklore in tales of Aesop and Hans Christian Andersen, delivering babies in sheets. The ancient Egyptians equated the bird with ‘Ba’ or the soul and in Hebrew it is called ‘chassidah’ or kindly.
A tentative start to a new structure appeared to have been made in the old garden, so perhaps the lone bird has found a mate and there will be a new beginning on their return from winter in Africa.