THE NATURALIST.
A Vanishing Bird.
If the iTbrth German farmer looks with equanimity upon the gradual disappearance of the stork, the northern tourist in quest of the quaint and picturesque will hear of tbe vanishing of the long-legged, red-beaked bird with unmixed regret. And what will the children say, whom Hans Andersen has told stories of the stork so wonderful that the bird seems part and parcel of Fairyland? But the facts are that within the last half-century the. number of storks in fechleswig-Holstein has steadily decreased. Villages which used to be the home of over 60 families of storks, and where sometimes six stork nests could be counted on the roofs of one farmer's buildings, hardly show a single nest now. Yet the arrival of the stork was always hailed vith delight by the natives, and it was counted as much a sign of good luck if a stork built on a roof as in other parts of Germany it is to have a swallow build under the eaves.
IMPROVED AWAY.
As a reason for the decrease in the number of storks, it is pointed out that these birds increase but slowly, that jealousy, envy, and pugnacity lead them to fearful battles, in which not infrequently the parent birds are killed, while the unfledged nestlings perish in consequence from starvation. A number of storks also die on their long journeys to and from the East in spring and autumn. Finally, if the storks themselves "were atked why they are leaving their rooftrees in the north, they would probably explain that they, together with many other things of a bygone age, are being improved away. Ihe marsh and bog lands of the days that are no more, and in which frogs and other dainties were plentiful, have been drained, cultivated beyond the ken of storks, and pasture lands and fields of waving corn, attractive as they may be from the mere human point of view, have no charm for the stork
Hence this desertion of the legions which have been tho summer quarters <^f the stork from time immemorial. — Westminster Gazette.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OW19020827.2.298
Bibliographic details
Otago Witness, Issue 2528, 27 August 1902, Page 64
Word Count
351THE NATURALIST. Otago Witness, Issue 2528, 27 August 1902, Page 64
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