Stork Talk: The White Storks of Burgos

We’re just back from a few days in Burgos, the great medieval pilgrimage city in Castilla y Leon, south of the Basque Country (where Pietro was attending a Virology Conference).

I will write in more detail about this trip soon, but I want to devote this post to a beautiful thing we experienced whilst there.

We were sitting outside a bar in the old town of Burgos when we heard a loud chattering noise above our heads which sounded like a woodpecker. Strange place to find a woodpecker, I thought  - but there were a couple of trees in the church behind me, so I looked up. I couldn’t see anything.  I turned my head to look at the roof of the church and was amazed to see a huge nest containing a stork perched precariously on top of the old stone parapet at the top of the Renaissance bell tower.

As we wandered around Burgos, we realised that there were storks on virtually every bell tower and quite a number of chimneys.

Sometimes there were multiple nests on a single tower, delightfully symmetrically arranged on its various ledges.

It turns out that the White Stork migrates north each summer from its home in Africa to rear its young in Spain and in Eastern Europe. They avoid the Mediterranean as they find it difficult to fly over the sea; some go north-east, over Egypt and Turkey and across to Poland and Germany, whilst others go north-west, over Morocco and into Spain. Apparently thousands of them can be seen across the towns and countryside of Castilla y Leon, nesting in trees and on church towers. Like the medieval Arabs, the ones that come to Spain mostly get as far north as Burgos but not much further: they don’t reach the Basque Country: too cold and wet for them, I suppose.

There is something quite magical about these huge rather exotic birds living their lives at church-roof level above our heads. Every now and again one hears that extraordinary chattering sound, looks up and sees another nest. Every now and again there is a flap of wings and a stork glides gracefully away from the nest into the sky. As we walked around town we were mesmerised by the sight of the adults feeding the chicks, preening themselves, or simply sitting on one leg looking out over the land. (They seem to able to stand totally still on one leg for hours.)

Perhaps the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all year was a single stork perched on one leg on a gargoyle on the massive ornate Gothic front of the great cathedral of Burgos. We stood watching it as dusk fell and then reluctantly went to have supper. More than two hours later as we passed the cathedral in the dark on the way home, it was still there in exactly the same place, still perched on one leg. 

It was there again next morning and returned once more to the same spot next evening.

Every summer in Spain and Poland these statuesque birds arrive as if from nowhere, perch on church towers, produce chicks, and then leave. Is this why folklore has it that that babies are delivered by storks?