The most inspiring sight I witnessed during a recent trip to northern Greece was entering small villages and finding white storks in huge nests plonked on telegraph poles and the occasional church tower.
The ancient Greeks invented the idea that these magnificent black-and-white birds deliver newborn babies via the story of Gerana and Hera (Gerana is turned into a stork by the goddess Hera and the image of Gerana seeking to retrieve her baby son in her beak has stuck with us), and many European peoples have believed that storks nesting on homes brings good luck.
The modern Greeks have built platforms on top of telegraph poles for their storks and seem to live alongside them quite happily, as do dozens of sparrows that make their homes inside the storks’ nests.
Storks are missing from Britain. They are written into our culture – Storrington, in West Sussex, means “homestead of the stork” – and they live nearby (Belgium, France and 13,000 pairs in Lithuania) but our last breeding pair nested on St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, in 1416.
This will change. I know of three projects currently seeking to bring storks back to southern England. But storks may not need a reintroduction programme. Every year a few are spotted over Britain – one recently appeared on Rutland Water – and injured storks currently held in wildlife rescue centres may also encourage passing wild storks to land and take up residence here.
Other large, exciting and completely harmless birds such as cranes and spoonbills (breeding in Yorkshire this year for the first time ever) have colonised Britain. But storks are something else – because they will nest in towns, they are emissaries of the wild, superb advocates for wildlife in an urban society.
Is it a car? Is it a duck?
Can birds help quell road rage as well? Researchers at Soongsil University in South Korea have found that a synthesised “duck’s quack” is a less stressful alternative to a modern car horn. A quacking noise based on the classic klaxon “ah-oo-gah” horn still alerts people to a vehicle but is apparently less startling than conventional horns.
I can see why, for the quack of a duck is comical yet caring. But I’m not convinced that a lovable quack wouldn’t become obnoxious if it was repeatedly associated with traffic disputes.
Mellifluous birdsong doesn’t soften mobile phone ringtones or the irritation of being put on hold by a call centre. Cuckoo clocks almost ruined the cuckoo’s call until both became virtually extinct in this country. If quacking horns take over, I feel sorry for the real ducks, whose cries will become forever associated with angry drivers.
Perfect pictures
My time in Greece was to pursue a career diversion as a tour guide, helping to find butterflies for enthusiasts to photograph. We are living in a golden age for wildlife photography and my Twitter timeline is awash with others’ stunning images of swallowtails and herds of elephant hawk moths.
The pictures that go viral are usually of the can-this-really-be-true? variety, as epitomised by the image of a weasel riding on a woodpecker’s back from a couple of years ago.
One picture almost matched that last week, when nature lover Colin Vanner snapped a damselfly hitching a ride on the head of a grass snake as it swam across a pond. As tabloid picture editors have long realised, we can’t resist signs of collaboration between species.
