Birdpass
English
White Stork

White Stork

Ciconia ciconia

Identify the White Stork by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

  • Download on the App Store
  • Get it on Google Play

The White Stork is a large, black-and-white stork with long red legs and a pointed red bill, famous for its rooftop nests. It breeds widely across Europe, north-west Africa and western Asia and is a long-distance migrant that winters in sub-Saharan Africa or the Indian subcontinent. Monogamous pairs reuse their large stick nests for years. After declines, it has recovered and recolonised several countries thanks to conservation.

Did you know?

  • On migration it avoids open sea, detouring via Gibraltar or the Levant because thermals do not form over water.
  • It is the bird that, in European folklore, brings babies.

Voice

Song
Call

About the species

Identification

A large, mainly white stork with black flight feathers, a long red bill and red legs. In flight the neck is outstretched and the black outer wings contrast sharply with the white body. Told from Black Stork by its white plumage; the Black Stork is dark except for a white belly.

Family

Ciconiidae

Size

Very large (swan)

Colours

white, black, red

About the habitat

Open lowland landscapes with farmland, pastures, hay meadows and wetlands such as floodplains; nests on buildings, pylons and trees.

Diet

Large insects such as grasshoppers and beetles, earthworms, frogs, reptiles, fish, small mammals and occasionally small birds and carrion, picked from the ground or shallow water.

Behaviour

Hunts by walking slowly through meadows, fields and marsh edges. A soaring migrant that rides thermals on broad wings, flying with the neck outstretched, often in large flocks. Adults are mostly silent and greet each other at the nest with loud bill-clattering. Both partners build the nest, incubate and feed the young, which fledge after about two months.

Sources

Photo: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:White stork (Ciconia ciconia) Białowieza.jpg

Sound: Pascal Christe, XC824502, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/824502

Sound: Sonothèque ADVL, XC922887, CC0 1.0 https://xeno-canto.org/922887

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_stork

See also