 |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
| Storks | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Painted Stork |
||||||||||
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
| Genera | ||||||||||
|
Mycteria |
The storks are large, long-legged, long-necked wading birds with long stout bills. They occur in most of the warmer regions of the world. They tend to live in drier habitats than their relatives the herons, spoonbills and ibises, and lack the powder down that those groups use to clean off fish slime. Storks lack a pharynx and are mute; bill-clattering is an important mode of stork communication at the nest. Many species are migratory. Storks eat frogs, fish, insects, worms, and small birds or mammals.
Storks are heavy birds with wide wingspans. The Marabou Stork, with a 3.2 m (10.5 ft) wingspan shares the distinction of "longest wingspan of any landbird" with the Andean Condor.
They tend to use soaring, gliding flight, which conserves their expenditure of energy. Soaring requires thermal air currents. Ottomar Anschütz's famous 1884 albumen photographs of storks inspired the design and engineering of aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal's experimental gliders of the late 19th century.
Wintering storks of some migratory species tend to congregate en masse if there is a swarm of insects or other abundant prey to feed upon.
Their nests are often very large, some having been known to grow to over 2m (6 feet) diameter and about 3m (10 feet) in depth. A stork's nest may be utilized for many years.
Storks were once thought to be monogamous, but this is only true to a limited extent. They may change mates after migrations, and migrate without them. They tend to be attached to nests as much as partners.
Their size, serial-monogamy, faithfulness to an established nesting site contribute to their prominence in myth and culture (see below).
The storks are members of the order Ciconiiformes, along with several other groups of wading birds as shown below:
The species are:
Genus Mycteria
Genus Anastomas
Genus Ciconia
Genus Ephippiorhynchus
Genus Jabiru
Genus Leptoptilus
The White Stork is the symbol of "The Hague", administrative capital of the Netherlands; the national bird of Denmark; and the unofficial symbol of Poland, where about 25% of European storks breed.
In Western culture the White Stork is a symbol of childbirth. In Victorian times the details of human reproduction were a difficult subject to approach, especially in reply to a child's query of "Where did I come from?"; "The stork brought you to us" was the tactic used to avoid discussion of sex. This habit was derived from the once popular superstition that storks be the harbingers of happiness and prosperity.
The image of a stork bearing an infant wrapped in a sling held in its beak is common in popular culture. The small pink or reddish patches often found on a newborn child's eyelids, between the eyes, upper lip, and the nape of the neck, which are clusters of developing veins that soon fade, are sometimes still called "stork bites".
"Vlasic" brand pickles in North America use this child-bearing stork as a mascot.
Most of these myths tend to refer to the White Stork.
|
||||
| View Live Article | This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License | |
||
