Keeper makes unique chick flick to film rare white storks from egg to wing
A birdkeeper has filmed some of t he f i rst white storks to hatch in Britain for centuries emerging from their shells, then flying off into the wild.
The unique Gopro footage shows the birds from incubation to hatching, picking at the helper in their early days, before they leave the nests for warmer climates.
Staff at Cotswold Wildlife Park have bred 21 of the birds as part of an ambitious rewilding programme, The White Stork Project. The scheme, set up in 2016, aims to restore wild stork populations to Britain for the first time since the 15th century.
Footage shows keeper Richard Wardle hand- feeding the chicks, which hatched in May, to maximise their chance of survival.
Clips also show the moment the storks were born and their behaviour as they begin to develop.
Once fully fledged and separated from the adults, the birds were weighed, sexed, and microchipped at the park in Oxfordshire.
The birds were also fitted with highly visible leg rings to make them easily identifiable after their release.
They were then transferred t o Knepp Cast l e Est at e i n West Sussex i n August f or their release into the wild - a momentous moment for the entire team.
J a mi e C r a i g , c u r a t o r a t Cotswold Wildlife Park, said: "It is an honour for the Park to be involved in such a fantastic project, releasing these birds into the stunning surroundings at Knepp and watching them soar on the thermals gives an enormous sense of pride and achievement for all involved."
Scientists at the University of East Anglia ( UEA) are now tracking the white storks in an effort to find out about migratory habits of a bird that disappeared from our shores more than 600 years ago.
The last definitive record of storks raising chicks in Britain was in 1416, when two nested in St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland.
GPS trackers were fitted to eight of the storks released t his year. Last month t hey embarked on their first migratory journey and several of the
youngsters have crossed the Channel and are making their way south.
Latest tracking data received on Wednesday reveals that two juveniles have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into Morocco.