Latest news

8th september 2023

Cathy Robinson and Laura Vaughan-Hirsch have collaborated on a round-up of this season:

2023 – A Storkingly Good Year 

 
Here at the White Stork Project, we’re excited to bring you an update of this season’s stork news. In 2020, Knepp became home to the first wild storks to breed in the UK for over 600 years, and they continue to delight, amaze and educate us. 

 
The project has gone from strength the strength, from just 2 nesting pairs in 2020  
increasing to 9 successful nests last year. This year, we have been thrilled to share that 26 chicks fledged from 11 nests across the Knepp Estate.  
 

Read on for a roundup of the 2023 season. 
 

Long thought to be faithful to nest sites, Knepp’s storks showed once again this isn’t necessarily the case. It has been a springtime game of merry-go-nests. Stork watchers have noticed the most des-res nest locations from previous years are often nabbed by new pairs in early spring. A total of 45 eggs were laid in 14 nests, with new nests being built in several locations which will hopefully be occupied next year as the storks expand their breeding range.  

 
An impressive 29 chicks hatched in spring across 11 nests. Most exciting of all were chicks hatched in nests built by some of our flightless birds. These birds were introduced at the start of the project to provide a ‘magnet’ population, intended to tempt in any wild storks flying over the area. They came to Knepp from Poland having been the victims of car accidents or collisions with power lines. Their home is a spacious open-topped area where they freely mingle with wild flying birds. But the flightless birds had never nested – until this year, that is. One pair included a flyer and a non-flyer – possibly the first in history! 

Making sure that our ‘ground nest’ chicks were progressing well was a particularly interesting part of the season for the stork volunteer team, who have continued to be an integral part of the project. As the chick’s parents could not all forage outside of the pen, we gave these chicks a small amount of supplementary food each morning. This involved some training from the fantastic team at the Cotswold Wildlife Park who have a successful population of storks rearing young on ground nests. Using their techniques, we daily visited our two ground nests and as a result got to know the birds quite well through these short interactions. On one nest, we had a male and female chick who behaved predictably at every visit; the male (GBC6) would invariably greet the volunteers with screeching and snapping, while the female (GBC7) played dead as soon as she noticed us. She would only feed once the visitors were leaving. Both of these chicks have been satellite tagged and we are excited to learn about their movements over the coming months and years.

 
The weather was kinder than in 2022 with no nests destroyed by spring storms, but the early drought made finding food challenging for the parent birds. But by July, 26 chicks had successfully fledged, including three chicks from the ground nests. This means an impressive total of 68 chicks have fledged from the project so far. 
 

Many people ask what happens to our juvenile storks after fledging. We are lucky enough to be able to fit GPS trackers onto some of our chicks. We are grateful to The Cotswold Wildlife Park as well as our local supporter, Skylark Coffee, for sponsoring these trackers. It’s a tricky process, as the lofty nests usually must be accessed by means of a cherry picker. However, it's well worth the effort as the trackers transmit the birds’ location so we can follow their movements. This year, we were hugely grateful to Jon Ginn from Ashdown Spider Lift who not only let us borrow his fantastic spider lift machine to access the nests, but also treated a couple of the volunteers to a quick and beautiful evening view of the Knepp Estate from nearly 30 meters! As ever we also enjoyed working with Jeremy the tree climber who continues to impress us with his ability to scale the mature oaks that a machine can’t get to, and safely retrieve our stork chicks for ringing.  

All chicks are ringed with a unique number, which can be found on the upper left leg and comes on a navy blue Darvic ring.  Anyone observing a bird is encouraged to send in their observations, via this website, so we can build up a better picture of where the birds have travelled to. Studying the behaviour of storks in Europe, we would expect chicks to migrate to Southern Spain or Morocco via France in late summer, remaining there until they’re ready to breed, when they return to their birthplace. In previous years, sometimes the chicks have migrated, and sometimes they’ve stayed close to home. We can only guess why – it’s probably a combination of weather conditions and availability of food. 

White storks rely on the ability to forage on a huge range of prey items including invertebrates, amphibians and occasionally even small mammals and reptiles. The quality of the habitat they live in and move through on migration is crucial to their success. In particular, wetlands and grassland with areas of scrub provide storks with a diverse food source.  
 

Every year, the wild chicks at Knepp are joined by several birds hatched to flightless parents at project partner Cotswold Wildlife Park. It’s always a heartwarming sight to see these birds take to the air for the first time when they are released at Knepp. This year we released 33 birds from Cotswold Wildlife Park, and they were quick as a flash out of the starting block when the door to their pen was opened, soaring over Knepp Wildland seconds after their release. It was incredible to see our wild adults and juveniles mixing with these birds. Even more astonishingly, a matter of days after taking their first flight some had set off on their migration across the channel, with, incredibly, the first bird reaching southern Spain within two weeks.  

Meanwhile, Knepp-hatched juveniles have been exploring the UK, flying up above East London and west along the coast as far as Portsmouth. So don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled on the sky as there might just be a stork flying above your head!  

 
We’ll bring you the latest updates on our birds’ travels as soon as we can. 

We were delighted to have such a successful year and are already starting to look ahead to 2024. The project is in the process of developing some live mapping so that anyone interested will be able to view the incredible journeys more closely.  

We are also developing our educational/outreach offer and are planning to engage with schools (both in the UK and across Europe) to share this inspiring story of nature recovery. If you are interested in hearing more about this, do get in touch with us via the website.  

1st November 2022

bird flu and what to do if you find a dead stork

Sadly, avian influenza (AI) is now spreading right across the UK and there have been some devastating outbreaks in 2022, particularly at seabird colonies in the north of England and Scotland. There have also now been confirmed cases in West Sussex.

Whilst we haven’t yet recorded AI at Knepp or among our White Stork Project birds, we remain vigilant and are stepping up our biosecurity measures accordingly. 

If you find a dead White Stork anywhere, regardless of the apparent circumstances of death, please do not touch it or pick it up. 

If you are able to, please make a note of the specific location at which you found the bird (ideally grid reference, What3Words reference or nearest postcode), as well as the time and date. A photo of the bird in situ would also be useful. 

Please email this information as soon as possible to whitestorksgb@gmail.com so that we can deal with collecting the bird and undertaking necessary testing in compliance with guidance given to us by DEFRA.   

13th september 2022

One of our dedicated team of volunteers, Cathy Robinson, has written this wonderful post about her experience of volunteering with the White Stork Project.

‘Prehistoric wings beat slowly, deliberately. The bird circles the tree, once, twice, three times before finally landing in slow motion. First, long legs drop onto the bowl-shaped pile of sticks, soon followed by a flurry of white and black feathers, a swan-like white neck and a carrot coloured beak. The haphazard nest, as if thrown together as an afterthought, judders but holds fast as the bird slowly folds its wings away.

These birds are the reason I’m sitting on a makeshift camping stool in the middle of a scrubby former field, surrounded by brambles, notebook in hand, my forehead damp from the mizzly rain. As a volunteer stork watcher for the UK White Stork Project, I’ve been watching these birds for over a year now and I’ve been with them through sunshine, gales, rain and hail.

The female bird crouched in the nest throws back her head in greeting and two bills clack clack clack in unison. The sound stirs something deep inside me. The male bird balances on the nest like a tightrope walker as the female hauls herself to her feet, stares at her eggs for a long moment, and launches herself into the air. Her legs trail behind as she flaps, flaps, flaps slowly away, black wingtip feathers reaching out like fingers. At the nest, her mate fussily rearranges their home, picking out scraps of nesting material in the tip of his beak and flinging it aside.

The UK White Stork Project’s ambitious goal is to establish 50 breeding pairs of this lost species in the south of England by 2030. The vast rewilded estate at Knepp was chosen as an ideal location. Not only does it have an astonishingly diverse habitat, supporting a wealth of bird species and a rich banquet of invertebrates – food for the storks – but its location in the south of England means it’s an obvious first stop for any stork flying to the UK from Europe. As a bonus, Knepp’s wildness means storks can do their thing in peace.

Humans and storks rubbed shoulders in Britain for thousands of years, archaeological evidence suggesting they nested here - often choosing nesting sites close to people - as long as 360,000 years ago. Sussex seems to have had a particular connection with these birds, revealed by place names such as Storrington, meaning Village of the Storks. Their rattling greeting would have been part of the background of life for our ancestors. Now long gone, but still buried deep in our consciousness is that sound. Hear it and I guarantee the hairs on the back of your neck will stand to attention.

No one knows exactly why storks disappeared from these shores. They were a delicious addition to the cooking pot in England of old, a tasty treat for the social elite, but their fate may have been sealed by their long links with hope and rebirth, thought to have arisen from Greek mythology. During the English Civil War, this association connected storks with rebellion, and they were persecuted to extinction. Storks hung on in Europe, though, and are a familiar sight, their nests perched atop tall buildings like chimneys or church steeples. They’re welcome there, too, thought to bring good luck. It’s not uncommon to see cartwheels erected onto the roofs of buildings, providing a platform to encourage storks to build their shaggy nests.

Initially, the White Stork Project brought wild-fledged disabled storks from Poland to the Knepp estate. These birds, unable to fly after colliding with power cables or falling victim to road traffic accidents, pottered about in a spacious, open-topped pen in the heart of the estate. The idea of forming this initial static population was to act as an avian magnet, drawing in any wandering storks from Europe which happened to be flying over the UK. The White Stork Project’s two satellite sites, in Wadhurst, East Sussex and Wintershall in Surrey make a convenient flyover triangle in South East England, close to the English Channel. This approach has been successfully used to restore stork populations in other parts of Europe. The strategy worked, as at least two wild birds are thought to be now nesting at Knepp.

The initial population was soon joined by the late summer release of captive-bred birds from the Cotswold Wildlife Park. These wasted no time in taking to the Sussex skies, echoing the past as they rode the thermals like modern pterodactyls.

The UK was in the grip of lockdown in spring 2020 when the first storks to successfully nest in the UK for over 600 years were confirmed to have hatched four precious chicks. Stork watchers and impatient birders were confined to their homes and gardens. But history had been made.

In 2021 the storks were back with a vengeance, this time with seven nests built and 14 chicks fledged. 2022 was a bumper year, with twelve nests, 47 eggs laid and 20 fledging successfully.

Lofty stork nests aren’t the most accessible structures to keep an eye on, and data on stork behaviour in the UK is in its infancy. The observations of stork watchers as we crouch in the undergrowth are helping to build up a picture of the lifestyle of this often surprising bird. Every bill-clacking greeting, every hunched over, wings-extended pair-bonding display, every feeding foray are meticulously recorded, information that will over time provide detailed knowledge about UK storks.

Stork watchers need to play detective, then. It doesn’t take much to deduce when love is in the air - I’ve watched as pairs get together and mate in early spring, serenaded by stereophonic birdsong. Day by day nests grow as the birds fly back and forth, back and forth adding to the construction, stick by painstaking stick. But only by watching and waiting does it become obvious when the birds hunker down, the first clue that eggs have been laid.

I’ve held my breath along with my fellow stork watchers, anxiously checking the calendar and crossing fingers for no fierce spring storms until the first sighting of parent birds regurgitating food into the nest. This means the young storks have successfully chipped their way out of the eggs. Storks lay between four and five eggs, and the tiny chicks aren’t visible from ground level for a couple of weeks. The rush of adrenaline when the first chick pokes its wobbly head over the rim of the nest makes the hours on the camping chair all worthwhile.

Storks are tender parents, placing food into the centre of the nest so all chicks have an equal chance of eating. As the chicks grow older, more boisterous, and ever larger, they jostle each other for space as they rapidly outgrow their home. They soon become their parents’ mini-me’s: hardly distinguishable from the adult birds, save for their grey beaks. There are inevitable casualties along the way. We cheer for the ones that do make it, but such is the bond between watcher and stork, it’s hard to be unaffected by the ones that don’t. Eventually, the lucky ones are spotted trying out their stilt legs for size before, around two months after they hatch, taking their first dizzying flight.

Things don’t always go according to plan in the stork world, however. One of the advantages of having many pairs of eyes trained on a single species – over 40 volunteer stork-watchers are actively involved in the White Stork Project - is the opportunity to bust some myths. And the Knepp storks wasted no time in deciding they didn’t want to be pigeonholed.

Storks are generally believed to return to the same nest site with the same partner year on year. It makes perfect sense for migratory birds like storks to be monogamous because they simply don’t have the time or the energy to look for a new partner after completing a long migration flight. Faithfulness to nesting sites means energy doesn’t need to be expended building a new nest each year.

In early spring 2022, however, a game of musical nests began. One nest, hidden in a quiet corner of Knepp had deteriorated, as homes do when they’re not used for a while. Spotted repairing this nest was a young dashing male, whose leg ring bore the number GB5F. The previous year’s occupants of the nest returned to find it occupied so they stole an adjacent nest from its previous owners, who in turn were forced to build a new nest elsewhere.

GB5F was soon joined by a female, GB29. She had raised a chick the year before with a different male on a nest perched on the chimney of the Knepp Estate castle building.

It wasn’t long, however, before the stork watchers noticed that GB29 was absent from her new nest as often as she was present. An eagle-eyed observer spotted her on the webcam trained on her original nest on the castle, cosying up with her old partner. She dallied between the two males for several weeks, nest building and mating with them both, sending the stork watchers’ messaging group wild with gossip and speculation. Of course, she was simply ensuring her chicks received the best genes by trying out different males.

GB29 finally settled with her original partner on the castle, leaving GB5F sad and alone on his beautifully-repaired nest. It seemed she preferred her old nest on the castle after all, so the press was alerted to the webcam with great fanfare. But that very day she and her partner started building a new nest in a Scots Pine tree, close to the castle but out of sight of the camera, leaving the much-trumpeted webcam trained on an empty nest. So it seems when push came to shove, GB29 was coy after all.

But what became of GB5F, left high and dry on the nest he’d purloined? Nobody knows, because shortly after his partner deserted him, the plot thickened. Another female was spotted on the nest, mating with an unringed male. It could have been jilted GB5F who’d lost his leg ring, or it could have been a wild bird, but GB5F hasn’t been spotted since.

European storks migrate in late summer, the birds flying thousands of kilometres towards the warmer climate of Africa. Given suitable thermals and a tailwind and they’ll take off en masse, soaring gracefully at first then flapping those gigantic wings. The sight of storks in vast numbers, soaring higher and higher, stays etched in the memory.

Usually, young birds take off on their first migration not long after fledging, only returning to their birthplace after two to three years when they’re ready to breed. In 2019, 24 UK captive-bred juveniles were released, some making their way to Europe with one, Marge, flying over 4,000km in just 25 days. The class of 2020 wild-bred juveniles, along with others bred in captivity, also dutifully took off, with sightings soon coming in from as far afield as Morocco.

In 2021, however, the youngsters decided to buck this trend. On a glorious day in early September, a little later than expected, all eyes were on the sky as the whole gang of juveniles took off, with excited reports of sightings soon pouring in on social media. Storks seem to like mooching about for a while before crossing the Channel. The previous year’s cohort ventured as far afield as Cornwall before deciding a shorter crossing from Dover would be a more sensible use of their resources. 2021’s youngsters did head to Kent, but to the north coast, away from the English Channel, before hotfooting it to Wadhurst, where they spent the winter.

Several of the juveniles had been fitted with fancy radio transmitters to provide valuable data about their migration routes. Otherwise, the only information comes from sightings of the unique numbers on their leg rings, reliant on birders armed with a powerful pair of binoculars. Far from recording the birds’ movements across France and Spain and onto Morocco or the Sahara, the GPS signals showed them pottering about West Sussex like pensioners on a day out.

This year, things are looking more promising. Several of the juveniles, after exploring Brighton, Cornwall and Kent, have already made the channel crossing into France and on to Spain. Watch this space for more stork updates soon.’

10th august 2022

Yesterday we released our latest batch of thirty-seven young White Storks at Knepp. Thirty-three of these birds were hatched at Cotswold Wildlife Park and Gardens earlier this summer, and for the first time this year were joined by four birds hatched at The Wildwood Trust in Kent. It’s very exciting to have Wildwood involved for the first time and we look forward to working with them more in the future.

As always, we are asking members of the public to submit sightings of White Storks through the reporting section of our website. All the project birds are ringed with a unique large blue Darvic ring on the upper left leg, these rings have white writing on starting with GB. Over 2,000 sightings of UK storks have been recorded from across the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain since releases began in 2019. This information is invaluable for learning about the movement and behaviours of these birds.

Seven of the group have been fitted with specially designed GPS tags. These will transmit data on a regular basis so that we can follow their paths, in particular to find out if they stay in the UK or whether they migrate south for the winter.

We have seen from social media posts and the GPS data that many of the birds headed to the Brighton area, so keep your eyes peeled if you live round there!

Keep an eye on @ProjectStork social media and the news page of the website for updates on their travels.

28th june 2022

It seems like only yesterday that the first eggs were laid but we have now ringed all our White Stork nestlings for the season. For the first time, we have also fitted four of these wild hatched birds with GPS tags. Previously we have only tagged the captive-bred released juveniles from Cotswold Wildlife Park (which we will be doing again later this year) but tagging the wild chicks will hopefully reveal more information about exactly where these wild birds are going if and when they leave Knepp.

Another milestone in the project this season has been the first successful breeding attempt away from Knepp, with a nest at our sister site in East Sussex producing one chick, which was also recently ringed.

All being well, we should have twenty fledged youngsters taking to the air in the next few weeks, to be joined by another batch of juveniles from CWP in early August.

By the end of this season, over 250 birds will have been released or hatched as part of the project, and we’re now approximately 20% of the way towards achieving our target of 50 breeding pairs by 2030.

Sadly we have to report that the recent breeding attempt by GB46 ('Doris’) and GB9A failed at the egg stage. On the plus side, this was their first breeding attempt since being released in 2019 and 2020 so hopefully they'll try again next year!

ANOTHER NEW NEST!

If you’ve been following our updates on social media, you’ll know we recently welcomed GB46 (one of our 2019 released females, known as ‘Doris’) back to Knepp after her travels to the Netherlands, Aberdeenshire and various places in England.

Well, even more excitingly, one of our volunteers has just this week spotted that Doris has now built a new nest with GB9A, a three year-old male also brought to Knepp from Poland.

Watch this space to see what happens next!

13TH MAY 2022

We're incredibly excited to announce that six of the nine White Stork nests at Knepp now have chicks - with a few more eggs due to hatch any day. In total we now have 23 chicks, all being busily fed by their parents.

If you're visiting the estate hoping to catch a glimpse of them, look out for the adult birds regurgitating food into the nest for the chicks to help themselves.

Please also make sure you stick to the marked routes and keep your distance from the nests - this is a very sensitive time for our storks.

Thank you!

Storks in serbia

We were recently sent this wonderful video of White Storks in the village of Taraš in Serbia. Taraš was 'European Stork Village of the Year' in 2015. It's great to see the local community all joining together to celebrate the arrival of the birds in spring and also to raise awareness of the many dangers they face on their migration.

29TH APRIL 2022

Fantastic news! We’re delighted to announce that it’s a record-breaking year for the Stork Project, with 37 eggs across nine nests at Knepp.

One of the female birds that has laid eggs this year was only released as a juvenile in 2020, which is unusually young for a White Stork to attempt to breed, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on proceedings there. In addition, another pair have laid eggs for their third consecutive year, having sadly failed to successfully rear any young in 2020 or 2021, so fingers crossed for them!

As ever, we will keep you updated on the progress in the coming weeks.

8th April 2022

Our nesting pairs from last year are well into the breeding season, with many of them now showing signs of having eggs. Project Officer Lucy was out at the weekend with the drone to survey these nests and to get an idea of how each pair is doing.

You may remember our pair near to the campsite at Knepp lost their nest completely to storm Eunice on 14th February, the pair quickly got to work at rebuilding and they have certainly been industrious! Not only have their rebuilt the nest, expanding the size and making it much more resilient to high winds, but they are now incubating FOUR eggs.

Nothing is holding these two back this year!

31st march 2022

We recently posted on our social media about our Castle pair and that they were testing out a new nesting spot. Its not uncommon for storks to have ‘satellite’ nests which they use to roost and as another option for nesting.

Although storks generally are very faithful to their breeding nest sites it isn't unheard of for them to set up somewhere new for many reasons.

Typically, our Castle pair have done just that! They have decided to give up their spot on the Castle chimney instead preferring to nest in a nearby tree.

If you’ve been following our live-stream White Stork nest cam, you may have noticed the pair coming and going, and even pinching sticks from the old nest! If you watch carefully you can see them flying off to the new nest behind an oak tree in front of the camera - they do say never work with animals or children!

It is still early in the season and younger individuals are still pairing up so it is still worth checking the camera, especially in early morning when they are more active. We just hope that a younger pair decide to use the nest this year.

Remember to keep sharing your sightings using #ISpyStorks

14th March 2022

We have BIG news!   

Today we have launched the UK’s FIRST live-stream white stork nest camera! 

In partnership with Wildlife Windows, and thanks to generous support from The John Swire 1989 Charitable Trust, we have installed a live-stream camera to the stork nest on Knepp Castle in West Sussex.  

You will be able to get a stork’s eye view of one of our wild white stork nests, from courtship and nesting behaviour, egg laying to watching chicks hatch - be warned, you may get hooked! 

Find the camera at www.whitestorkproject.org/live  

GET INVOLVED!

We want you to help record any interesting behaviours seen at the nest, you can submit information through the form on our website.  All sightings help us to better understand the behaviour of these fascinating birds which are now back and breeding in the UK! 

We’d love to hear about your stork nest camera experiences which you can share with us by using #ISpyStorks 

21st February 2022

Technology in Conservation - part 2

Following on from our last post and continuing the theme of technology in the #WhiteStorkProject here is another bit of tech we regularly use... drones. ⁠

Monitoring nests from the ground reveals quite a lot about the various stages of nesting with experience, but to get a more accurate look at what is going on inside the nest we use a drone to safely monitor the nest from a distance. The use of drones for wildlife surveying is now a well used technique and if done sensitively it causes little or no disturbance to the wildlife being studied. Ecologist @Sussex_Emerald and Project Officer @lucyinthewild are both licenced and trained to use drones for this purpose. ⁠

From the drone footage, we can monitor each nest from the first signs of nest building through to chicks hatching, and we can estimate the correct dates for accessing nests to ring chicks when they are the right age. We can look at nest productivity and fledging rates across the site which helps us to monitor the population as is grows and evaluate the success of the reintroduction. ⁠

Over the next couple of weeks we have an exciting new bit of tech to share with you so stay tuned for updates... you’re going to love it! ⁠

15th February 2022

Technology in Conservation - part 1

We use a range of different methods to track and monitor our White Storks. As you have seen in previous posts, a lot of our on the ground monitoring is undertaken by volunteers who spend many hours on site watching the birds. We also have sightings coming in from members of the public. ⁠ ⁠

The data that comes in from sightings and observations of the storks is hugely important for the project, but there are a couple of areas where gathering data from sightings alone just isn’t enough or even possible. This is where modern technology steps in. ⁠ ⁠

White Storks are a migratory species and undertake long journeys each spring and autumn, our released storks are no different. To be able to know where our storks go when they leave the UK, to understand migration behaviour and monitor causes of mortality, we GPS track a proportion of our released birds.

We use specially designed GPS tracking devices called Flyway 50 transmitters from Movetech. These devices collect high spatial and temporal resolution GPS and accelerometer data which allows us to determine home ranges, habitat choice, foraging strategies, distance moved per day, flight efficiency, and energy expenditure.

In 2019 one of our juveniles, Marge, flew south 4011km in 25 days from Knepp in West Sussex to Rabat in Morocco! She has migrated five times since being released and hopefully this year will be the year that she returns to Knepp! ⁠

Latest sightings

With a flurry of sightings coming in from Plymouth and Cornwall over the August bank holiday, we believe they are likely to all be of GB7M, a male who came to the white stork project from Poland in 2020. He was reported in Sedgemoor, Somerset on the morning of August 26th, then photographed (right) in Whitleigh, Plymouth that evening. He spent the night on this chimney, and was later seen in Helston, Cornwall on the evening of August 28th.

Doris, one of our much loved storks who made local headlines after spending winter of 2019 in Durrington, Wiltshire. She continued to explore the UK, and was seen in the Isle of White in September 2020. This year we received five sightings of her in the Netherlands, with the most recent being in Frisia, the Netherlands on August 27th.

We received the first sighting in two years of GB9D. He was released in 2019 and was last seen in Cornwall, on August 26th, 2019. Almost two years later to the day, he was spotted at a landfill site in Calvados, France on 25th August, 2021.

2nd August

Just a day after the last of our wild bred chicks left the nest for the first time, they were joined in the skies above Knepp with 27 juveniles released as part of our captive breeding programme. Having arrived from Cotswolds Wildlife Park, where they were bred, these youngsters spent just over a week getting settled in, before being released, and have since been mingling with the established stork population and exploring Knepp and the surrounding areas. We are excited to have been able to fit GPS tags on nine of these storks, so are looking forward to watching their migration.

1st August

It’s that time of the season where we have been eagerly anticipating the fledging of young. They teased us for a while, with lots of wing stretching and small practice flights, gaining a little height above the nest while practicing their flapping. The first chicks fledged on July 5th, with all three juveniles leaving their nest and being spotted shortly after foraging in the field below. Our next fledgling took to the skies on July 9th, showing the siblings in their nest how it is done. Today the last of our 14 wild bred chicks raised at Knepp this year successfully fledged.

21st June 2021

White storks are a migratory species, breeding across much of Europe, and spending the cold winter months in Africa. Witnessing this migration can be quite the spectacle as white storks migrate in flocks of thousands of birds, which utilise thermal air currents to help them soar along their journey, while expending the minimum amount of energy. Like many species, they have a strong affinity for their home, and will return to the location where they were born to breed in subsequent years. In fact, they are so loyal to their breeding sites, that storks return to the same nest each year, which they will repair and build up as needed in order to lay their next brood.

Juvenile storks, like those released from Knepp in 2019 and 2020, instinctively fly south for the winter, and generally do not return to their breeding grounds for two or three years. But what do they do in those adolescent breeding seasons before they come home to begin producing their own young?

Thanks to the wonders of GPS tagging, we can show you! These maps illustrate the movement of Marge, one of our 2019 fledglings who was fitted with a GPS tracker, between her release in August 2019, up until May 2021.

It shows quite a typical journey, where juveniles will fly south to Spend winter in Africa, in this case Morocco, before beginning a short northern migration the following spring.

However, they do not make it as far as their breeding grounds. Instead, they hold off on parental responsibilities for a year or two in order to spend summer in countries such as Spain, as you can see Marge did, before returning to her wintering site in Morocco in September.

The following year, as birds approach sexual maturity, they travel further north towards their natal breeding site. Marge hasn’t quite made it back here yet. Having been blown off course by a storm, she is currently resting in France, but we are hopeful she will make it back to Knepp next summer. 

17th june 2021

Our first homecoming?

GB6E, a juvenile released from Knepp in 2019, is getting very close to home! In the past week she's been spotted in Guernsey and Sark. So keep your eyes on the skies, particularly if you are close to the UK coast, and hopefully we’ll see her back on mainland UK. This would be the first of our released juveniles to return after migration, so we’re very excited to see where she turns up next.

This is not a GPS tagged bird, so we wouldn't know about her progress without you, our wonderful community reporting your sightings, so we would like to thank you for your incredible contribution. Here’s what we know about her activity since her release almost two years ago:

Will she be our stork to return from migration? Let’s hope so!

1st june 2021

This week is National Volunteers Week and we couldn’t let it go by without giving a massive shout out to all of our wonderful volunteers, old and new!

Here is a message from Project Officer Lucy about them.

“We have a wonderful group of volunteers working on the ground here with us at the White Stork Project. 

They are a hard working and dedicated bunch who are just nutty about the storks!  They help to keep the storks well fed and cared for, are out all hours of the day monitoring stork nests and are often found happily chatting away to visitors about the project. 

They are some of the best ambassadors we could ask for.  Not only that, but they help to keep me sane on those days that are crammed full! 

Always keen to do more, over the last few months they have taken on extra responsibilities such as training new volunteers, coordinating feeding and monitoring rotas, data crunching and running a full scale trail camera programme at our three release sites racking up hours of time analysing thousands of photos. 

I honestly don’t know what I would do without them and I am proud to call them friends as well as trusty volunteers.”

A huge THANK YOU to all of our volunteers for dedicating their time and energy to helping us restore the White Stork back to the UK.

4th May 2021

It’s THAT time of the year again… WE HAVE OUR FIRST CHICKS!

Earlier last week eggs began to hatch in the two nests from last year and we have confirmed the chicks are doing well. We have more eggs due to hatch throughout May.

If you are visiting Knepp, please remember to stick to the marked routes and keep your distance from our nests, this is a really sensitive time for our storks. Thank you.

16th February 2021

Over the winter, we have had very few sightings around Knepp of our unringed male from nest one which produced three chicks last year. He was last seen at our satellite site in East Sussex. This has led us to question what might happen with the female, GB07 and whether we could expect chicks in this nest again this year. Fear not! Over the weekend she was seen displaying a top the nest with an individual with a blue and orange ring. He has been been at Knepp for the last two years but is not a bird from the project and his origins remain unknown. He spent most of last year around each of the nests giving the pairs a bit of a headache but he clearly just wanted to get involved!

This year it looks like he will have his chance now that GB07 is without a mate and from the photos coming in from the weekend it would appear that nest repairs and lots of displaying is going on. We could well be in for a drama if Mr Unringed appears again!

10th February 2021

New pairing!

Over the last few days our volunteers have been seeing these two lovebirds following each other around at Knepp. ⁠ They have also been seen doing a bit of displaying and prospecting possible nesting sites... it's all very exciting!⁠ ⁠

They are both still quite young, both just coming into their fourth year, but we have high hopes for them for the season ahead.

3rd February 2021

This stunning photo was taken by volunteer Ryan Greaves whilst he was out at Knepp this evening.

Ryan said “I lucked out with my local afternoon sunset stroll @kneppsafaris today. Such an array of shades and colours. Wonderful to see some white storks from the @whitestorkproject starting to pair up and stake out nests for the season ahead”.

Thanks for sharing Ryan!

28th January 2021

The White Stork Project is now on Instagram!

You can follow us at @whitestorkproject for updates about the project, news on the storks and stories from our volunteers.

13th October 2020

Yesterday was another big day for the project… two of our juveniles who were in southern Spain have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar!

We have spoken to a group of surveyors who monitor the number of birds crossing the Strait and asked them for information about the flocks that crossed on the 12th. Apparently, the weather conditions weren’t great and a flock of 135 tried to cross on the 11th with many turning back. This fits with the GPS data for one of the young storks whose data shows it attempting the crossing before heading back north. A group of 35 crossed on the 12th and it would seem that our two were amongst them.

30th September 2020

Over the last few weeks our six tagged juveniles have been making their way south on their first autumn migration. Along the way they will have met with flocks of wild white storks and will be following these more experienced birds to find the best route, feeding and resting places. Many of them will be using landfill sites across Europe to find food. Many storks now use these sites due to the abundance of food available, some have even stopped migrating completely and live on the landfills all year.

You can see from the map below that they are making good progress. We have three in France and three in Spain currently.

5th September 2020

Today, six of our GPS tagged white storks crossed the English Channel!

This is a huge success for the project and it is fantastic to see that this year they came back east before attempting their crossing. Whilst we don’t know for sure at this stage, it is likely that a number of the non tagged individuals went with them.

We will be keeping an eye on their progress and will keep you updated!

4th September 2020

With a change in weather conditions our juvenile storks have started to head back east towards Knepp. We will be watching closely to see whether they return to the release site, or if they continue to head east.

2nd September 2020

One of the Knepp chicks, GB4H aka ‘Kajtek’, was spotted in Devon on 1st and 2nd of September having split from the rest of the group of juveniles.

Here it is in Ernesettle drying out after a rain shower.

1st September 2020

Our storks are currently spending time in and around Lizard in Cornwall. We have been getting some fantastic photos of them coming in, including this one of four of them sitting on Landewednack church. Who knows, maybe one day they will be nesting on the roof!

Thanks to the National Trust and Stuart Croft for the wonderful photo.

31st August 2020

Yesterday a group of 22 of our white storks left Knepp and headed west along the coast. Sightings came in throughout the day and our GPS data shows that seven of our tagged birds were amongst the group. We also know that at least one of the Knepp chicks is also with the group with sightings of him coming in from Dorset!

10th August 2020

Today we released our 2020 cohort of captive bred juveniles.

These nineteen juveniles were reared at Cotswold Wildlife Park and came to Knepp at the end of July. They have spent the last couple of weeks settling into the area and getting to know our resident storks here.

Today we opened the gates and watched as one by one they stepped out and too their very first flights. A little erratic to start with they soon picked it up, just a few minutes of flying and it was hard to tell which were our juveniles and which were the adults. Soon we had thirty-eight storks flying above us, what a sight!

Eight of the nineteen have been fitted with GPS tags and we will be monitoring them all closely over the next few weeks to see where they go. Last year one of our juveniles travelled down to Morocco so it will be exciting to see what they do!

24th july 2020

Our fourth and final chick from 2020 took its first flight and fledged the nest today.

This is the single chick from nest 2 who has been growing well. After losing the other two chicks, the parents put all of their energy into raising this chick.

It has been seen flying in the fields near the nest and has also been seen with the adults in the nearby enclosure where we have our static population. It is great to see it integrating with the rest of the flock.

13th July 2020

What a weekend it was! Our remaining two chicks left the nest on Saturday, entertaining the crowds who came to see them.

These two younger chicks took a little bit longer to make it back into the nest and spent a time on the ground foraging in amongst the long vegetation in the field, which is full of grasshoppers.

By today they were back in the nest and taking a well earned rest. Over the next few days we expect them to take more flights and spend time with the adults, who will continue to feed them for 7-10 days.

9th july 2020

Just yesterday I was saying we were still waiting for our chicks to fledge… And today, our first chick completed his first flight around the tree! With a brief stop on the ground, the chick made it back up to the nest where he spent the rest of the day relaxing! You can watch the video of his first flight here, it is well worth the watch and I suggest you watch with the sound on to hear the reaction from visitors!

8th July 2020

Since Thursday last week we have all been waiting eagerly for our chicks in nest one to fledge. They are now at the age where they should be leaving the nest and taking their first flights.

With rain and strong winds over the weekend we weren’t overly surprised to find them still in the nest on Monday morning.

The oldest and largest chick has been doing lots of wing stretching, flapping and hopping, it has even managed to hover over the nest quite a few times! The other two chicks have also begun their pre flight tests.

The parents have been returning to the nest less and have been reducing the number of feeds the chicks get. They have also been seen in the wet meadow below feeding and bill clattering to the chicks in attempts to draw them down, so far without success.

As I write this they are still comfortably sat on the nest, waiting for their next feed… I hope to be bringing you news soon of their first flights.

30th june 2020

It was another great day here for the project today as we got up into nest two to ring our fourth and final chick at Knepp this year.

We were without our trusty cherry picker this time so Jeremy Gates, local tree surgeon and bird ringer, climbed up the 11 metres into the oak tree to retrieve the chick. He took this great picture whilst he was up there!

With the chick happy and healthy, we put our identification rings on the chick, took some measurements and gave it the once over.

A few of our volunteers were lucky enough to get a closer look at the chick before it was safely put back in the nest. Mum was waiting in a nearby tree and came back not long after we had all retreaded to a safe distance.

A huge thanks to Jeremy who volunteered his time and expertise to help with the safe retrieval of the chicks so we could ring them.

17th june 2020

Today was a big day!

In a military operation with a team of experts, tree climbers and a cherry picker we got up into our nest at Knepp and brought down our three chicks to ring them.

This gave us the chance to give them a quick health check, take some measurements and to fit identification rings. A large blue ring on their upper left leg; our project ring starting the letters GB, and a small silver ring on their lower right leg; a British Trust for Ornithology ring. These rings help to identify the birds both here in the UK and around the world.

All three chicks are looking very healthy and it won’t be long until they are ready to leave the nest. We have been seeing lots of wing flapping and stretching as they exercise their flight muscles in preparation.

Once they fledge they will be seen with the adults around Knepp as they are taught the ropes. They will be fattening up too as in just another few months they will be heading off on their first migration south for the winter.

The hope is that these three will join our cohort of juveniles reared at Cotswold Wildlife Park this year who will be arriving at Knepp late July before being released in August. This group will head south and using a combination of the ID rings and GPS tags we will be able to monitor their journey.

white storks on springwatch 2020

The white storks appeared on BBC Springwatch again this year. The team captured some lovely footage our our chicks. You can see the episode here

Wild white stork chicks hatch!

15th May 2020

In European folklore, the stork is said to be responsible for bringing babies to new parents. On this occasion though, the White Stork Project is delighted to announce that wild storks at the Knepp project in West Sussex have had their very own babies.  In early April it was confirmed that there were five eggs in the nest and in the following weeks the birds were regularly observed taking great care to incubate the eggs.  The nest is in a large oak tree, making viewing difficult but despite this, in the last week, the Project Officer watched as eggshell was removed from the nest and the parents were seen regurgitating food for the chicks to eat.  More recently a few lucky people have had glimpses of the chicks.

This is the same pair that attempted to breed at Knepp last year without success.  The female is a ringed bird from the project, which came to Knepp in 2016 from Poland.  The male, however, has no identifying ring, so this is likely to be one of the twenty or so vagrant storks which visit the UK each year.

This is a hugely exciting development for The White Stork Project.

Lucy Groves, Project Officer for Durrell commented: ‘After waiting 33 days for these eggs to hatch it was extremely exciting to see signs that the first egg had hatched on 6th May.  The parents have been working hard and are doing a fantastic job, especially after their failed attempt last year.  It is incredible to have the first white stork chicks hatch in the wild for hundreds of years here at Knepp.  These are early days for the chicks, and we will be monitoring them closely, but we have great hopes for them.  This is just one step towards establishing this species in the South of England. It may be a small step, but it is an exciting one.

This stunning species has really captured people’s imagination and it has been great following the sightings of birds from the project during the period of lockdown and hearing about the joy and hope they have brought to people.’

The announcement went out this morning on the Self Isolating Bird Club, an online programme hosted by Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin which has been running through the lockdown. The pair gave the project huge praise and this was a fantastic way to share the announcement, a huge thanks goes to them both for having both the storks and Lucy on the show. You can find the video here below.

big announcement

26th April 2020

We have been monitoring the nests at Knepp closely over the last few weeks and we are delighted to announce that two of the three nests contain eggs!

Nest 1 has a whopping 5 eggs!  This is the pair who nested at Knepp in an oak tree last year and produced 3 eggs but unfortunately they did not hatch.  The female, who is one of the project birds, was just below the average breeding age and we think as it was her first attempt at breeding that either the eggs were infertile or they failed to hatch due to the inexperienced parents.  The pair have decided to nest in a different location, another oak tree at Knepp, which is not unusual if they have failed at a previous site.  It is looking very promising this year with 5 eggs being laid, she is obviously in a great condition and the pair are working hard at keeping the eggs safe and warm, taking it in turns to go off and feed.

Nest 2 is a new pairing this year and this will be the first time they have bred, but they are being very attentive parents and seem to be doing well.  The female, who is wearing a green ring Z9404, was our first project bird to cross the channel which she did in 2017 and was seen in Brittany September that year.  She returned to the UK in April 2019 and has been in and around Knepp since then.  She was seen displaying with the male, who is also from the project, in early March this year.

Nest 3 does not have any eggs at this stage but the pair have been seen mating so it is looking very promising for them also.

We will bring you updates of each pair’s progress over the coming weeks and we hope that we will hear the patter of tiny feet sometime in May.

10th March 2020

More exciting news came from my volunteers today who were down at Knepp monitoring the storks. We have been keeping a close eye on them since we saw the stork carrying nesting material a few days ago.

Chris and Juliet managed to catch this fantastic displaying behaviour on video and capture this photo too. From this we are able to confirm that this is a new pairing for this year!

7th March 2020

Exciting behaviour was seen today at Knepp when Knepp safari guide Tom Forward spotted one of our storks carrying nesting material. You can find his video here.

Could this be the start of another exciting season for the White Stork Project? We hope so!

3rd March 2020

Today we had the pleasure of having Anjana Gadgill filming for BBC South Today at Knepp. This was for a short piece to be shown after the news this evening.

We were lucky enough to have fantastic weather and the storks put on a good display. You can find the clip here.

23rd February 2020

Volunteers were hard at work over the weekend to help Project Officer Lucy prepare some nests to encourage our resident birds to breed this year. We have 25 resident, flightless storks in the open enclosure at Knepp. These birds were injured in the wild in Poland, unable to be released back into the wild due to their injuries they came to live at Knepp in 2016. They act like a magnet for any wild birds passing over and for the released birds, as well as this they will hopefully become a static breeding population. As some of them are now nearing breeding age, around 4-6 yrs, we have created some nesting platforms with easy access for the birds that might not be able to get higher up to nest.

Last year our volunteers helped to clear the area around these platforms as it had become overgrown during the summer, all of the material which was cut down was then used to build the nests. These nests are just to get them started and to give them an idea of what they should be doing! We left plenty of material around the platforms for the birds to add themselves and we will be monitoring them closely to see if they make use of them this year.

8th February 2020

GB46 is one of our adult birds who arrived to the project from Poland in 2018, she was injured there in the wild and having suffered a wing injury it was thought that she would join our non flying birds at one of our satellite sites, Wintershall Estate in Surrey. We had news that she had left Wintershall in September 2019 after regaining her flight, these birds are hugely resilient and very adaptable so it is not always surprising when one of them proves us wrong!

She has been spotted in Durrington, Wiltshire, since mid September and we have been getting some fantastic photos of her there. She even gained some fame by appearing in the Durrington local newspaper and has been named Doris by the community. Fantastic!

BIAZA conference 2020

1st February 2020

On behalf of the white stork project and Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, project officer Lucy was invited to speak at the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) Field Conservation and Native Species conference which was held at Chester Zoo at the end of January. This was a great chance to hear about other projects happening in the UK and to share the knowledge and successes of the white stork project so far.

gomecello landfill, spain

14th January 2020

We have kicked off the New Year with another sighting of juvenile GB8D in Gomecello, Spain! Thanks again to Miguel Rodríguez Esteban for the sighting report and the fantastic photos. Here you can the site where the juvenile is spending her time with over 500 wild white storks!

A very Merry christmas and a happy new year!

24th December 2019

We would like to say thank you to everyone who have reported their sightings and who have supported the project in different ways throughout 2019. It has been a big year for the project with many milestones. 

We had our first nesting pair at Knepp, our first cohort of British bred juveniles from Cotswold Wildlife Park and subsequent release at Knepp in August, followed by our very first juvenile to successfully migrate to Africa in September!

Here's to another fantastic year for the project in 2020!

volunteer christmas party!

20th December 2019

As a thank you to all of our wonderful volunteers who help look after our resident storks, record sightings and help maintain the enclosure at Knepp we decided to throw a little party. Along with Knepp Wildland volunteers we gathered in the Granary at Knepp for drinks, festive treats and a roundup of 2019 from Lucy our Project Officer and also Penny the ecologist at Knepp.

Our volunteers got to see how the numbers have been this year for the wildlife at the wildlands which included 21 singing nightingales, 25 piglets and 130 purple emperors in Penny’s talk followed by the update from Lucy about the journeys our juvenile storks have been taking.

A huge thank you goes out to all of the volunteers who have helped us throughout 2019, we honestly couldn’t do without their hard work and dedication!

further sightings on spanish landfill sites

17th December 2019

Two more of the released juvenile storks have been sighted in Spain, this time they have been spotted at the Gomecello Landfill site just north east of Salamanca. This is the first sighting we have had of these individuals since they were last sighted in the UK, so it is exciting to hear that they are alive and well. Thanks to Miguel Rodríguez Esteban for the sightings and some fantastic photos of the juveniles which clearly show their leg rings and are hanging out with wild white storks.

Sightings from spain

5th December 2019

We are excited to announce that we have had sightings of our juveniles across Spain! These individuals are not wearing GPS tags but have been reported by keen-eyed birdwatchers who have spotted the blue Darvic rings our birds are wearing. These sightings are incredibly useful to us as we are able to plot where these youngsters are despite not wearing GPS tags. This picture came in from Sandra Martínez who was watching around 150 white storks at a landfill site near Zaragoza, Spain.

volunteer practical day

25th November 2019

A group of regular and new volunteers joined Project Officer Lucy at the Knepp white stork enclosure this weekend to carry out some practical work in preparation for the breeding season. The group worked hard clearing areas of scrub which had grown around existing nesting platforms. Now that the platforms can be accessed again by the storks and we have created lots of nesting material, we are planning to run some additional volunteer practical days in the new year where we will be building some artificial nests to encourage breeding in the enclosure. Huge thanks goes to the volunteers who joined us for the day! To find out more, use the contact form to add your name to our volunteer list.

reported sightings

1st October 2019

Since our release date in August we have been working hard following the journeys of our young storks. Although a small proportion of them are wearing GPS tags, we are using sightings sent in from members of the public to help us map where individuals are. These sightings will help us to understand the behaviour, movement patterns and welfare of these young birds. We want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has sent in sightings, photos and tweets so far, like this photo from Jol Mitchell! Don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled and report your sightings through the website.

Flying free!

12th August 2019

We are delighted to tell you that a group of 24 juvenile white storks has been released at the Knepp. The birds were hatched and raised at Cotswold Wildlife Park earlier this summer, before being transported to Knepp. They were initially kept in captivity while they became accustomed to their new surroundings before being released earlier this week. The storks are currently settling in to their new home, but how long they will stay at the site no one knows!

Special Delivery!

1st August 2019

The team at Knepp received an exciting delivery from Cotswold Wildlife Park this morning. We are delighted to say that 24 juvenile storks are now settling in, before they are released later this month!

and they’re off!

10th July 2019

After being given health checks, the adult storks which had been kept in a specially designed closed pen at Knepp have just been released in to the larger open pen. These birds are already exploring their new surroundings and over the next few months will start dispersing further.

Fundraising page

8th July 2019

We have just raised over £6,000 for the project! A huge thank you to all those people who have donated so far! This will be used to help us monitor the storks in the wild, plus also to help us deliver a wider programme of public engagement activities, including visiting schools to talk to children about the project.

White storks on Springwatch!

11th June 2019

The BBC came to film a section for this year’s Springwatch. Check out a snippet from the programme here.

Nest update

3rd June 2019

Towards the end of May, the team at Knepp were keeping a close eye on the nesting white storks due to some observed changes in their behaviour. The eggs were due to start hatching around this time and the female was seen sitting tight on the nest during a period of rainfall on Wednesday 29th May. However, she was seen leaving the nest around lunchtime the following day and although the pair visited the nest a number of times after that, there were no sightings of them sitting at all. We have therefore concluded that, sadly, they have failed to hatch or rear young.

Although this news is disappointing, it is not unexpected due to the immaturity of the pair, with this being their first breeding attempt.

nESTING 14 METRes UP

3rd May 2019

Perhaps for the first time since the civil war (1640 – 1648) we have white storks attempting to nest in southern Britain. The nest has been checked and we are pleased to report that there are currently three eggs being incubated.

over 70 eggs at Cotswold wildlife park

19th April 2019

The team at the Cotswold Wildlife Park is thrilled that the very young flock of white storks that it has at the park is producing a bumper crop of eggs this year. Some of them have hatched already!

swedish storks

The stork team went to investigate the successful Swedish reintroduction of white storks