Now, although slowly, it is returning. As the Spoonbill (platalea leucorodia) and others splendid birds, as the Great white egret (egretta alba) the white and black stork return to nest in our country.

New laws (Italian law 157/92 and European community directive 79/409/CEE) assure them the right to existence and they do them a kind particularly protected.

The better environmental conditions, the new oasis, the better care of the territory from our part, has created such a biodiversity to make now more desirable the permanence to this animal on our agricultural grounds for the reproduction and breeding of his chicks.

Unmistakable for his big dimensions, standing it has a height superior to the meter and a wings opening that overcomes 1.5 meter. The long neck and the long legs confer to the white stork a splendid and superb aspect.

Males and female are practically indistinguishable even the first is generally more big.The young storks are recognizable for the darkest color of bills and legs.

This splendid bird has a spectacular flight that begins with a long running and a strong wings beat up to the attainment of the high altitudes.Using correctly the warm air draughts, it directs therefore his flight with the least waste of energy.

A flight that fascinates me and it takes me to such manner that sometimes I remain to wait for hours and hours hoping to see it, and when finally, at the horizon, as a small point appears this splendid bird I remain pervaded by a thin quiver that remains in me the whole time that I remain to observe it.

The big wings, from which stand out the black remiges in clear contrast with the other feathers, of candid white color, have the extremity points frayed similar to those of the big birds of prey and they allow the stork to be a good glider.

The principal routs of migration are two: the first passes for the straits of Gibraltar and another for the Bosphorus. Some storks also transit on our peninsula, through straits of Messina, but this rout is not their favorite one because of the ample part of sea that separates Sicily from Africa, since the warm air draughts, having produced from the heating of the ground by the solar rays, are practically absent above the sea and therefore make more exhausting the flight.

Only beginning from 1985, after years devoted to the environmental reconstruction, to the educational campaign developed by LIPU (Italian BirdLife) and WWF, and finally to the approval of a competent legislation, we have been able to assist to a slow constant increase of the nesting population, especially in the north Italian westerner area.

At the present the wild couples of white stork nesting firmly in our country are more than 100.

The nest is a very voluminous base constituted by an interlacement of dry sprigs of variable dimensions, joined to straw, leaves and material of other kind.

The nest construction is made in particular by the female, although the male provides and collaborates in the material transport; the job is conducted quickly in the first two weeks when they come back from wintering districts.

The stork is extremely territorial, it defends its own nest and the neighboring territory from the other storks and birds.

Violent clashes can be observed between males and pairs that want to occupy the same nest.

If there are not external factors for which it cannot set remedy, for instance the intervention of the man or the change of the surrounding environment, the stork returns to the same nest for a lot of years in continuation.

I remember a pairs of storks that every spring returned in the same nest placed in open country on a pylon of the electricity and every year, after the reproduction and breeding of its chicks, they left it for Africa.The construction of a small asphalted road, that crossed the field, the trouble produced by the industrial machineries used to the purpose, the continuous presence of the workers provoked the definitive renouncing of it.

The eggs are of white color and their weight are about 100g . The deposed number is middly 4 but they can vary from 1 to 7.Their opening happens after around one month and both the parents taken care of the chicks.

The feeding happens through the regurgitation of the food in the nest, in precedence ingested by their parents.

If there is the presence of chicks the defense of the nest becomes even more bloody.

In a nest built to ground level, to the edges of a small pond, 3 chicks of stork were attended by their father, while the female was being to search food in the proximities.

A Grey heron, hungry, wandered in the pond, hoping to find something to eat.I have assisted to the violent and sudden attack of the male of stork that struck repeatedly with the bill the heron, when this, have approached unintentionally, to 1 meter about from the nest.

The stork is practically without voice.The adults don't utter sounds to exception of a weak hiss.The principal sound, of both sexes, are the continuous beating of the bill (so named “bill – clattering”).

This sound is used in varied social situations and during the welcome ceremony.When male and female meet or they are approached, one of the characteristic behaviors of the kind is to overturn completely the neck to the back beating the bill repeatedly.Such behavior is the opposite one of the attitude of threat" to bill in front" and it eliminates every aggressiveness between the companions.

Suspicious and solitary, in Italy is still few frequent and visible, although beginning from 1994 some sporadic attempts of nest-building have been observed.

Only the maintenance of diffused forest environments, under conditions of good quality, will guarantee in the future the constant presence of this bird on our territory.

Personally I believe that the health of the environment in which we live reflects it directly on our health.Wish us therefore to see always the returns of a great number of storks in our countries and in our woods,their presence is the litmus paper of a natural relationship that is reconstructing between the man and his environment.

EUROPEAN WHITE STORK MIGRATION MAP