White Stork Extinct.............................. in Denmark

According to The Copenhagen Post the white stork (Ciconia ciconia for all you budding ornithologist's out there) is no more - well not in Denmark at any rate.

What surprises me about this story is the fact that a census needed to be completed to confirm the fact - these aren't small birds, they grow more than four feet tall and have a wing span of six feet, you'd notice if something that big went missing without needing a form to fill in surely? They also, to paraphrase the great Eddie Izzard, build 'huge fuck off nests' that are seen on the rooftops of houses and on the tops of telegraph poles - again you would have thought our Danish cousins would have noticed the lack of giant birds nests on their roofs wouldn't you?

It has to be said that the white stork is a bit of a strange bird. They rely heavily on energy efficient soaring flight during migration and soaring requires the presence of thermal air currents that are not found over water. Now given that the bird has to migrate from Northern Europe to South Africa you can see that this could cause some problems - the Mediterranean is water after all. Well the big birds get around this in two ways, firstly some of them fly down through France and Spain and then across the Straits of Gibraltar or they take the eastern route, down to Turkey via the Middle East and then across Egypt and on south. They do this once a year in two groups of up to 10,000 birds and including the flight home they cover nearly 20,000 kilometres.

I can see why they are extinct in Denmark, it's too much hassle, all that avoiding water on the way home - which is bizarre when you are a wading bird. They've had it with the long haul flights, they are probably hanging out somewhere in the Atlas Mountains.