A storch family.

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Im Naturpark Dümmer.
22-04-2000.

I make camp in a small forest of birch trees just before sunset. There are several farms nearby but I don't expect any problems wild camping like this. Not like the inhabitants of the nearby farms will phone the police and I'll end up sleeping on the hard wooden bench of a German police office holding cell on charges of vagrancy.

One of these farms is actually so nearby that I can hear the clatter of storches that live on a nest overhead the farm. I have heard that storches are soundless, that their throats can't produce sounds so instead they clapper their beaks together.

They fly to and fro their nest carrying half a forest for nest building purposes and in the last of the day's light I see them mating, a quick and rowdy affair with feathers flying around and the male repeatedly slipping off the female's back due to his long legs.

The farmer's children watch the whole proceedings with just as much interest as me if not even more. Even the farm dog is looking up with keen interest in his canine eyes

When it is all over the storch couple rearrange their feathers and continue working on their nest. Small and bigger pieces of wood, branches and boughs are moved from side of the nest to the other. the nest itself is on top of a man made construction on top of a twenty-five meter tall wooden pole.

Slowly working on my cans of Weissen brew my mind wanders back to my childhood in the south of Holland, to a time when storches where still plentyfull with every farm having a similar storch nest construction, each farm having its own storch couple - sometimes even two storch couples. People used to believe that having storches inhabiting these nests would bring them luck, People used to believe they would bring fertility to the farmer's wife.

Even today it is custom in Holland to put a wooden storch in the garden when a baby has been born.

Human superstition which served the storch clans well but eventually the storches stopped coming to Holland and became extinct in our country due to extensive hunting during their winter migration routes.

Like always mankind can be a blessing or a curse to the world around him/her!!!

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Photos

The storch family
preparing for night time

The storch family
busy with their nest