Storks Settling in at Sunset
On my recent trip to Botswana, I had an opportunity to observe a variety of beautiful Storks. Storks are beloved in mythology and literature, associated with childbirth and one of my favorite birds with their long graceful form and often bright coloration. Storks are large, long-legged, long-necked wading birds with long stout bills. They belong to the family called Ciconiidae, and make up the order Ciconiiformes. Ciconiiformes previously included a number of other families, such as herons and ibises, but those families have been moved to other orders. German folklore held that storks found babies in caves or marshes and brought them to households in a basket held in their beaks. The babies would be dropped down the chimney of a hopeful mother. Households would notify when they wanted children by placing sweets for the stork on the window sill. The Modern English word can be traced back to Proto-Germanic *sturkaz. Nearly every Germanic language has a descendant of this proto-language word to indicate the (white) stork.