A Weinheimer (natural) landmark: since the turn of the millennium, a pair of white storks has been breeding up to four young birds every year at the depot of the North Upper Rhine Water Authority. Photo: Kreutzer
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By Günther Grosch
Weinheim. It rattles again around the Weinheim depot of the water authority, which is “between the dams” on the Weschnitz. “The first white storks are back from their winter quarters in the south,” observed hobby ornithologist Dietmar Matt. The Adebare are early, which suggests that the returnees did not move to Africa in the autumn, but only to France or Spain. “Storks are heralds of spring,” says Matt, who has chaired the for many years Weinheimer Naturschutzbundes (Nabu) was. The recent low temperatures did not point to spring. But what do the minus temperatures, with which the winter had reported back with full force, mean for the big birds?
“Storks always have their down jackets with them,” says the bird expert with a smile: “When it’s cold, they fluff themselves up. This creates a cushion of air that protects against the cold and retains body heat.” It is true that heat can also be lost through the feet and long legs; but like ducks and geese, storks also have a kind of built-in heat exchanger: the blood flowing away from the heart transfers its temperature to the blood, which flows back to the central organ.
It was a good decision for the animals that, in all likelihood, they did not travel to the African continent. That would not only have cost a lot of energy, it would also have been associated with risks. It is not for nothing that only a little more than half of the animals come back from there.
But how does the flight actually go? Storks from this region usually take the “western route”. Via France and Spain it is more than 6000 kilometers “as the crow flies” to North and West Africa, possibly even to Ghana. The birds with their size of around 115 centimeters and a wingspan of up to 165 centimeters fly between 80 and 100 kilometers per day. “Even more with a tailwind,” explains Matt. Because storks are “gliding fliers” and not “flapping fliers”, they need the updrafts.
Because of the different flight routes, experts speak of “east” and “west pullers”, explains Matt. The border line stretches from the IJsselmeer in the Netherlands over the Harz and into the Alpine foothills. “West brooders”, around 17 percent of all white storks, like to overwinter in the southern Sahel. “Eastern breeders” buy their flight tickets via Turkey, the Middle East and then in the direction of East or South Africa. In our region, however, there are more and more storks that no longer migrate south, but prefer to stay in our regions.
Most of them come from resettlement projects that the Vogelfreunde in Heddesheim have been successfully pursuing for several years. These storks never learned to travel with their own kind. When they mate with wild conspecifics, they often stay here too. As a result, the number of storks that are and remain settled here is also increasing in the region.
Because the food supply is sufficient with us. Even if, as is currently the case, a blanket of snow lies over the landscape. In this case, the birds do the same as in Spain, where they eat their way through the rubbish dumps. With us, they fly to the nearest composting facility, where mice abound all year round. In an emergency, however, storks can do without food for one to two weeks. Since the turn of the millennium, according to Matt in his recently published book “Die Vogelwelt Weinheims”, a pair of white storks, usually up to four young birds, has been breeding every year on a wooden mast in the Weinheim district “Between the Dam”. This is thanks, among other things, to the initiator of the stork resettlement, the former operations manager Heinz Hofer, and the Weinheim municipal utilities. Since then, the settlement and the annual ringing of the young birds have received professional support from the former “stork representative” of the Karlsruhe regional council, Walther Feld, and nature conservation warden Dietmar Matt.
According to Matt’s research, the earliest report about white storks was made in 1893 by the Weinheim ornithologist Julius Ziegler.
Ornithologist Dietmar Matt. Photo: Kreutzer–
