White giants and happy clappers
SEEKING out long-decommissioned factory chimneys on the skyline might not appear to be an action-packed activity, as once was trainspotting or butterfly collecting among schoolboys. Neither would scanning gaunt crane gantries lying idle on docksides, their use as hoists of dripping containers of fresh fish from trawlers now history.
But if you are looking for a particular bird on a high perch — usually the highest there is — this is what occupies your time.
Such high eyries are the established homes of white storks (Ciconia ciconia), large and usually silent birds which greet one another by clapping their great beaks, making a sound of old-time wooden football fan rattles, now curious artefacts of sports museums, much like a referee’s wooden whistle which wouldn’t just do that, according to a popular song of about 50 years ago.
Last week’s storms on the Portugal coast scattered those storks that had remained. They moved inland or sought shelter among dense reeds in estuarine marshlands which are their feeding places for frogs, snakes and small fish and from where they pull sodden moss to squeeze into the beaks of young in the nest during hot summer days.
The birds build great homes of sticks on top of old factory chimneys and other high places and inhabit them year after year, adding a branch or two until impressive edifices build up to tottering heights. There they may be seen peacefully standing, nodding to each other, coming and going about their business, and driving off curious gulls.
The chimney homes of the birds remained standing, by official decree, after the former sardine canning factories shut up shop, so the red-brick pinnacles stand out somewhat incongruously among the new-builds, providing homes for gentle giant birds which have always had a special relationship with mankind.
Storks may also be observed in picture-book locations in countryside towns and villages where the local olive and wine-producing inhabitants encourage them to settle and they may be seen standing in their nests on the roofs of historic buildings, sometimes having had old cartwheels placed on high on which to build.
White stork numbers are increasing in their range on the Iberian Peninsula and in parts of central and eastern Europe. There is considerable seasonal migration to Africa, usually at the end of August, via Gibraltar or the Bosporus, when great, disorderly flocks may be seen. But many remain, even in the cold Polish winters.
I have been fortunate enough to have watched them in the steppe-like Extremadura countryside of Spain and also in the historic city of Caceres, where they compete for attention with the much smaller lesser kestrels (Falco naumanni), which hunt for insects in the evenings around high old buildings over cobbled streets.
But the storks are the kings: on the Pro-cathedral of Santa Maria there is what is considered the largest collection of storks’ nests in Spain, one on every abutment. Storks’ presence among mankind has always been gentle and peaceful. The Spanish have a lovely word for this — convivencia — which says it all.