Storks

We had been traveling to Chernigov many times before I noticed the large nests situated on electric poles and other high spots in several of the village areas we pass.  By that time, I believe it was late in the Fall and the birds had all migrated south.  So I wondered if they were stork nests but didn't know.  The next Spring we saw the birds, looked up information on them, and began trying to photograph them through the windows of the moving marshrukas.  It has taken this long, with the special help of a recent drive with the Galbraiths when we could stop the car and take pictures, to have enough good photos to produce this blog.

I copied this information from the Smithsonian National Zoological Park website:
   White Storks are tall (1 m., 2.3-4.4 kg) long-necked wading birds with long bare red legs and a straight pointed red bill. The white plumage of the head, neck, and body contrasts with the black wing feathers highlighted with a sheen of purple and green iridescence. Sexes are similar in appearance, though males are slightly larger.  The European subspecies of the White Stork breeds in several discontinuous populations across much of Europe, the Middle East and west-central Asia.

   Storks are large birds that rely heavily on energy efficient soaring flight during migration. Soaring requires the presence of thermal air currents that are not found over water. White Storks are therefore reluctant to fly across large bodies of water such as the Mediterranean Sea to reach their wintering grounds in tropical Africa. They solve this problem by having the bulk of the European population split into two distinct migratory routes. Western birds cross the Mediterranean at the Straits of Gibraltar, while most of the eastern birds cross the Bosporus and circle around the Mediterranean through the Middle East.
   Breeding White Storks prefer lowland open habitats of wet pastures, flooded meadows, and shallow lakes and marshes with scattered trees for roosting and nesting. They have adapted to nest on man-made structures and forage in freshly plowed fields.  White Storks are highly opportunistic feeders who will consume a wide variety of prey items including insects, frogs, toads, tadpoles, fish, rodents, snakes, lizards, earthworms, mollusks, crustaceans, and, rarely, the chicks or eggs of ground-nesting birds. Foraging storks search for prey visually while walking deliberately with bill pointed toward the ground. 
   Though storks form monogamous pairs for the duration of the breeding season, they do not migrate or over-winter together. If the same pair reforms in successive years it is largely due to their strong attachment to their nest site.
   The female usually lays 3-5 eggs, more rarely up to seven. Parents share incubation duties for 33-34 days. Young chicks are covered with white down and have black bills. Both parents feed the young on the nest until they fledge at 8-9 weeks of age. Fledglings may continue to return to the nest site each evening to beg for food from their parents. Young birds reach sexual maturity in their fourth year. Banding records indicate that wild birds can live and reproduce successfully past 30 years of age.

You will notice that these photos were taken in the Spring when it was easier to see the nests before trees' leaves obscured the view.  It is also obvious that the pairs were nesting and it was well before any young birds had hatched.  I did notice some birds foraging on the ground, but never soon enough to snap a picture!  From Wikipedia I copied the following:
   A large population of White Storks breeds in central and eastern Europe. In a 2004/05 census, there were 52,500 pairs in Poland, 30,000 pairs inUkraine, 20,000 pairs in Belarus, 13,000 pairs in Lithuania (the highest known density of this species in the world), 10,700 pairs in Latvia, and 10,200 in Russia.... 
   Storks have little fear of humans if not disturbed, and often nest on buildings in Europe. In Germany, the presence of a nest on a house was believed to protect against fires. They were also protected because of the belief that their souls were human. German and Dutch households would encourage storks to nest on houses, sometimes by constructing purpose-built high platforms, to bring good luck. Poles, Lithuanians and Ukrainians believe that storks bring harmony to a family on whose property they nest.