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The majestic white storks at Knepp – a volunteer’s experience
21/01/2025

By White Stork Project Volunteer, Gary Franklin

I have always had a passion for wildlife and have been lucky enough to have travelled to many wildlife destinations around the world, with Southern Africa the most visited region. Imagine my joy and surprise to discover that the majestic white stork that I have seen many times abroad was now resident and breeding in Sussex, as part of a reintroduction and rewilding scheme, located in the stunning rewilded estate at Knepp. How amazing is that!

The White Stork Project has been in place in the UK since 2016, with the aim of reintroducing this iconic bird as a wild, breeding population and to establish at least 50 free flying breeding pairs in Southern England by 2030.

The project initially started with non-flying birds from Poland, rescued following accidents and donated by Warsaw Zoo, with the majority of these now here at Knepp, in a six-acre enclosure, complete with mature oaks, scrub and a lake. These are supplemented year on year by a number of fledged storks (around 25-30 per year) that have been bred at Cotswold Wildlife Park and sent to Knepp and, after a period of site familiarization, are released as free-flying birds.

At the end of the 2024 season we now have a whooping 27 nests, a combination of free-flying pairs nesting mainly in mature oaks, and ground nests in the non-flyers enclosure. These nests produced 53 fledged storks, which was double the previous year and up from four in 2020! This is a fantastic achievement and playing a part in this reintroduction project as a Monitoring and Feeding Volunteer is joyful, humbling and a wonderful experience.

Cotswolds Wildlife Park visit 2024

I first became aware of the Rewilding Project at Knepp though social media and wildlife conservation articles and after visiting a few times found out more about rewilding and the White Stork Project and put my name down as a potential vol! I have been a Stork Volunteer for four years. I currently work part time as a Sales Director at a building controls company and that type of role can be all consuming and stressful. Volunteering at Knepp as part of this project is the best antidote to modern life’s stresses and challenges I can think of.

I have two prime roles as a volunteer – monitoring and feeding the non-flyers. The monitoring has a major role to play in our knowledge, understanding and success of the free and non-flying birds, especially around the breeding season.

The mating season takes place in spring, typically from March to April. Courtship rituals include soft cooing calls, bill clattering, as well as loud warnings to scare away intruders. After mating, the female lays 2-5 eggs with intervals of two days. Both parents take part in the incubation process, which lasts 33-34 days. When the chicks hatch out, both the male and the female feed the young by rotation. The chicks fledge, reaching the age of 58-64 days. Then, around 7-20 days after fledging, they become independent. They start breeding at the age of 3-5 years.

Monitoring can take place any time of day and ideally for 1-2 hours at one nest/tree location. My monitoring equipment comprises a scope, binoculars, notebook & pen, bird ID app, a flask of coffee, various snacks and a camping chair.

Cotswolds Wildlife Park Training Day

While monitoring, the volunteers (and what a great bunch of people you all are) allocate themselves dedicated nests/trees so that we can cover all the nests that are active that season, whilst always looking out for new potential nest sites.

During a monitoring session we make notes of the weather conditions, start/stop times of the session, nest location, bird identification (normally by the ID ring we have put on when chicks are in the nest), behaviours witnessed (bill clattering/up-down display/threat display/nest building/mating/sitting on eggs/regurgitation of food/ground activity/chick left unattended/fledging/other observations), and report our findings on our Data Entry Form app on our mobile devices.

When I’m monitoring I feel like I’m part of a dedicated team comprised of scientists, reintroduction experts and fellow wildlife lovers, helping to reintroduce a species and rewild the UK countryside, which is so desperately needed to bring us all back to nature and take in the joy and comfort the wild can give you.

When I’m sitting quietly in my chair, with my coffee and a biscuit, the whole glorious nature family comes alive around me. Birdsong (including the beautiful nightingale and many other songbirds doing so well at Knepp), red kites ducking and diving overhead, red and fallow deer looking up as they pass by, a symphony of insects sounds, galloping Exmoor ponies, the wonderful Tamworth pigs rootling everywhere, and of course the majestic white stork gliding overhead.

Feeding the storks is a whole different ball game! The non-flyers have a beautiful 6-acre pen to roam and breed and feed in. They require additional feeding, especially at the breeding season, and this is mostly carried out by volunteers working in pairs. The role encompasses collection of food buckets, entry into the enclosure, feeding the non-flyers (and flyers and red kites and crows and buzzards and magpies!) from two different locations and, in the breeding season, supplementary hand-feeding the ground nests chicks, which is as close as you can get to feeding a baby dinosaur in Jurassic Park!

Feeding the storks is such a privilege and I feel very lucky to be able to do so. After some years of trying different feeding schemes and following a visit to Cotswold Wildlife Park, we now have a defined set of rules that involve set times, feeding locations and enclosure checks that have greatly improved the breeding success rate of the non-flyers, with last year culminating in nine fledglings for the ground nests. A number of these fledging have now migrated and some have reached as far as Morocco. How amazing is that!

The role also includes many other tasks, including coppicing twigs and branches for nest material, helping take school and other groups around the estate alongside Laura, our wonderful stork Project Manager who runs the project, and, last year, helping to run in a cable through a stream (very wet jeans that day!) for the CCTV YouTube link for Nest 3a.

 I have suffered over the years from anxiety at differing levels at different times, and being close to nature and working with such a dedicated team of conservationists whatever the weather, out there helping in whatever way we can to bring the wild back to Sussex and watching these majestic birds fly in large numbers over your head before heading off to southern Europe and Africa, is the perfect tonic to modern life and calms my soul. The White Stork Project is a shining example of how rewilding can transform the countryside. Visitors to Knepp often marvel at the sight of these large, striking birds in trees, on the ground, or flying in flocks overhead. Sharing this wonder with others and witnessing their joy is incredibly rewarding.

Come and see for yourself – and maybe you’ll see one of our white storks, identified by it ID ring coming all the way back to Knepp from Morocco after its first migration, to start the life cycle all over again.

All text and photos credit to Gary Franklin.

 

 

Cotswolds Wildlife Park Training day 2

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