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Two articles this month have a link we didn’t foresee when planning the issue. White storks can be seen all over Europe and photographer Jasper Doest wanted to document the way they have changed their habits as people have encroached on their natural habitats (p80). The birds have proved masters of adapting to human spread by using our man-made structures in place of the nesting places they are losing to intensive agriculture. When I visited southern Portugal (p44) I saw plenty of examples of white storks nesting on electricity poles as if they were iron trees. In the most extreme example, 24 pairs of storks had used every junction in the legs of a large pylon so it looked like a strange Christmas tree decorated in grassy baubles. The birds around the town of Mértola are more fortunate than Doest’s feathery models, perhaps, because they are part of a determined effort to conserve nature that shows what can be done if the will is there.