After a hot summer in Rhineland-Palatinate, the storks have made their way to their winter quarters. “All breeding pairs have now flown south,” said Jessica Lehmann, head of the Rhineland-Palatinate stork center in Bornheim, the German Press Agency. Apparently, many animals left earlier than before. “We assume that this was mainly due to the drought this summer.” According to the radio transmitters with which the animals are equipped, the birds have now arrived in Spain and Mauritania, among other places.
In Rhineland-Palatinate there are hardly any storks that spend the winter there. “These are isolated cases that cannot move south due to various factors,” said Lehmann. It does happen again and again that storks can be observed in the state well into winter. “However, this does not allow us to conclude that the stork is a non-migratory species. In cold weather or sudden cold, storks can quickly fly to a warm place and stay for a few days to return and check on their nest.”
Some animals fly routes deep into Africa. “Other animals reach a few 100 kilometers to France,” said Lehmann.
A final balance sheet for the stork population in Rhineland-Palatinate for 2022 is not yet available. “Since the ringing is done on a voluntary basis, you always have to wait until everyone has reported.” However, preliminary figures indicate a weaker increase in the stork population. “That’s not really surprising. At some point there will be an ecological balance if nature doesn’t feed even more storks,” emphasized Lehmann.
Since the storks in Rhineland-Palatinate are generally not fed, they are dependent on the search for food. “In 2022 there were fewer stork youngsters per nest on average, which was probably also due to the weather. It was very dry for a very long time, so that meadows, stream and river meadows dried up and were no longer available as a food source for the storks,” explained the head of the center.
In addition, storks are now also settling in areas where they have not or hardly ever been found before. “So more and more storks were spotted in the Hunsrück and in the western Palatinate,” said Lehmann.
The stork population in Rhineland-Palatinate was considered extinct from 1974 to 1996. A reintroduction project started in 1997. The sponsor of the center in the regional “stork capital” Bornheim is the PfalzStorch campaign, which was launched more than 20 years ago and plays a central role in the reintroduction of the rattlesbills.
Pfalzstorch
