Sustainable Developement
at the Breeding-, Resting- and Wintering Areas of the
White and the Black Stork
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White Storks in Southafrica
The overwhelming majority of White Storks in southern Africa belong to the migratory population that breeds in eastern Europe and southwestern Asia. They leave Europe either over Gibraltar or Istanbul, mostly in August and September.The earliest flocks of migrants have large proportions of young birds. Flocks of adults tend to migtrate 10 to 14 days after the young birds. During the European winter, to the south of the equator is summer. Because of that the Storks migrate across the equator into the southern Africa. They use all the five countries to spend the winter. However Botswana and South Africa are the favor countries.
The
Atlas of Southern African Birds shows that White Storks arrive in
Zimbabwe from about October. They then slowly move south so that peak
arrival month in the Western Cape is in December. Most birds leave the
region in February and March. These migrants do not breed in southern
Africa.
However, and mysteriously, a tiny number of White Storks do breed in South Africa. There are independent records of birds starting to breed in four different localities at different times over the past 70 years.
In South Africa Storks find plentiful green caterpillars of the Luzernen butterfly particularly in watered fields of lucerne. To the delight of cultivators! They save the use of expensive pesticide.
In Lesotho,a little Kingdom located inside south Africa, yearly several hundred Storks are overwintering on nearly 3000 km high sites. On that high plateau Storks endure snow- and hailstorms, however tey are compensated whith hundreds of thousands of frogs that are present at the moistly banks of that region.
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