Step into the "European White Stork Village" – Lüchstedt, Germany

Source: Global Times

The White Stork is a migratory bird that lives and breeds in warm Europe in spring and summer, and migrates to the tropics to escape the cold in autumn and winter. Every year on the last Saturday of July, the village of Lüchstedt, located in the Prynitz region of Brandenburg, Germany, near the Elbe, hosts a grand "White Stork Festival" to welcome visitors from all over the world to see the white storks before they move south. This year, I also took the opportunity to visit this small German village known as the "European White Stork Village".

Every house has a white stork nest on its roof

The village of Lüchstedt is a small village of only 600 inhabitants, starting from Berlin by train before changing buses, and the nearest train station in the village is also 10 km away, and the buses need to be reserved in advance on weekends. It is precisely because of the inconvenience of transportation, there are usually no tourists in the village, and the white stork can rest and recuperate without interruption. As the car spun into the village, I was immediately captivated by the spectacular sight in front of me, and almost every house had one or more white stork nests on the roof, and pairs of white storks frolicked or rested in the nests.

I first went to the visitor centre set up by the German Union for Nature in the village of Lüchstedt, which since 1995 has been home to the management of the UNESCO "Elbe Landscape - Brandenburg" biosphere reserve. The visitor center has a small exhibition where you can visit a variety of stork specimens, including white storks, learn about the life habits and migration paths of European white storks through display panels and interactive installations, and a children's book corner with a collection of various white stork stories. During the White Stork Festival, the village dispatched a car with a ladder that could rise to a high place overlooking the two white stork nests on the roof of the visitor center.

I then participated in a white stork guided tour organized by the Union for Nature association, visiting the white stork nest on the roof of every house in the village. The tour guide distributed telescopes to everyone to see the shape of the white stork more clearly. The white stork is a large bird with a body length of more than 1 meter, a wingspan of 1.5 to 2 meters, except that the front of the wings is black, the whole body feathers are white, the adult white stork has a red beak and legs, and the juvenile bird is black. Passing through an open wetland meadow in the village, the tour guide said that this is the feeding ground of the white stork, which is a carnivore, and its food includes insects and fish.

In recent years, the population of the European white stork has declined, and the number of newborn white stork young birds in the village of Lüchstedt is also decreasing year by year, mainly because people around the world have converted some swamps into farmland, the large use of pesticides has caused environmental pollution, coupled with climate change and other factors, making the living environment of the white stork deteriorate, the food is reduced, and the mortality rate increases.

There's a "White Stork Club" in the village.

The "White Stork Club" in the village of Lüchstedt was founded in 1990 to protect the white stork and expand the white stork population, as well as to maintain the local and surrounding white stork habitat. The "House of the White Stork" in the middle of the village is home to the club's headquarters and information centre, where visitors can visit the collection of specimens of local wildlife, learn stories about the white stork and the village as a whole, and purchase postcards and souvenirs. At the top of the old water tower next to it, there is a large bird's nest, and the staff said that this nest is the most popular in the village, and the first white storks live in every year.

In addition to carrying out popular science education, the White Stork Club also has a lot of hands-on work that needs to be practiced. Before the arrival of the white storks every spring, the club maintains and repairs the nests in the village and nearby communities in advance, checks whether the nests are stable, cleans up the plastic, rope and other garbage in the nests, and adjusts the nest structure if necessary. In mid-June, when the chicks are a few weeks after hatching, the White Stork Club will work with the White Stork Commissioner in the Pulinitz region to count the number of new white storks in the season and use a lifting platform to approach the nest and put tracking ankle rings on the young birds. Clubs also sometimes take care of injured or abandoned young birds, arrange local accommodation for them, and help them adapt to the wild environment.

The author also noticed that on the outer wall of each house with a white stork's nest in the village hung a delicate small wooden plaque with an interesting white stork pattern and recorded the arrival and departure dates of each white stork couple who lived in the nest over the years and the situation of raising offspring. A large wooden plaque under the old water tower records the number of white storks and newborn young birds in the village year by year. This information board, which the White Stork Club has set up since the 1980s, allows you to summarize and assess the development of the white stork population over the years.

The White Stork wishes the Germans wish

The white stork is considered the "national bird" of Germany. As early as 1966, the German Bird Protection Association chose the white stork as its logo and has been used to this day. According to the German Nature Union Association, Brandenburg is the federal state with the largest number of white storks in Germany, and about 1,400 of the 4,000 pairs of white storks in Germany live here. White storks in Brandenburg are "Western immigrants" who spend the winter in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, and when they come to Brandenburg in the spring to mate, the female lays 2 to 7 eggs, which are hatched and raised by both parents.

The village of Lüchstedt has the highest density of white storks in Germany, with an average of 40 pairs of white storks living here each year. The village consciously protected the white storks began in the 1970s, because the white storks would compete for nesting land every spring when they flew in, and the villagers spontaneously built artificial bird nests on the roofs of each house with rattan, branches and other materials, allowing the white storks to freely choose their preferred location, and the problem of "housing difficulties" was solved. In 1996, the village of Lüchstedt was awarded the title of "European White Stork Village" and joined the European network of "White Stork Villages". The purpose of selecting "White Stork Villages" is to make these villages widely known internationally as a special cultural and natural heritage, and to promote exchanges and discussions on the issue of the protection of white storks.

If not disturbed by human factors, the white stork has almost no fear of humans. Germans also call the white stork "bird of delivery", people believe that the white stork fell on the roof of the house to build a nest and settle down, who will be happy to have a noble son, the white stork on the roof can also bring a harmonious atmosphere to the family. The more scientific explanation is that in the early years, when someone in the family is pregnant, the fire will be warmed for a longer time than other families, so the white stork is more willing to choose the chimney mouth of this house to nest, it seems that the family with the nest of the white stork will soon give birth to a baby. According to German folklore, white storks would pack babies found in caves or swamps into baskets, give them to the mother of their children or place them in chimneys, and people could place candy on window sills to attract white storks. This expectation slowly evolved into a folk culture with beautiful meanings.