WHITE STORK. 527 



being folded up until the head comes between the shoulders, and though 

 the legs are stretched out behind, and the neck and bill extended in front, 

 they do not form a straight line as in the Heron, but both legs and neck 

 are -slightly drooped so as to form a distinct curve. 



The Stork has no voice. If driven into a corner, it makes a sort of 

 hiss; but its chief mode of expressing itself is by rapidly striking its 

 mandibles together. The " klappering " of the Stork is a curious per- 

 formance. Sometimes the beak is laid against the belly, and sometimes 

 the neck is bent in the opposite direction, and the bill lies on the back, of 

 course with the under mandible uppermost. The two mandibles are struck 

 together so rapidly that a loud clear trill is produced, which is curiously 

 modulated now quick, now slow ; now loud, now low. 



The Stork procures most of its food from the water, into which, if 

 necessary, it wades to some depth. Frogs and fish are its favourite diet ; 

 but no animal food comes amiss to it rats, mice, lizards, snakes, young 

 birds, shellfish, snails, and insects of all kinds are greedily devoured. 

 It only varies this diet with vegetable food when hard pressed by 

 hunger. 



The Stork is not a very early breeder, even in South Europe and North 

 Africa eggs are seldom found before the end of March, and in Central 

 Germany they are usually laid late in April. In Denmark they are gene- 

 rally found during the second half of May. The Stork has attached itself 

 to human habitations almost as much as the House-Martin and the Sparrow. 

 If possible it builds its nest on the roof of a house, and in civilized coun- 

 tries a platform of some kind, an old cart-wheel or similar structure, is 

 provided for its accommodation. Occasionally several nests are built upon 

 the same roof, and a house in the middle of a village is quite as eligible as 

 one on the outskirts. The old nest is used year after year, a slight addi- 

 tion being made to it every season, so that after the lapse of years, if it 

 happens to be in a situation protected from the wind, it sometimes attains 

 a great height. Instances are on record of Storks' nests which have been 

 inhabited every year for more than a century, and some have been known 

 to reach a height of five or six feet. In the valley of the Lower Danube I 

 have seen a Stork's nest in a willow tree. It occasionally breeds in trees 

 in other localities ; and Mr. Benson writes that in Seeland it may be found 

 breeding in trees in small colonies. I have also seen its nest on the walls 

 of old ruined houses in the steppes of the Dobrudscha; and Dixon 

 observed small colonies breeding on the ledges of the cliffs in Algeria. 



The nest is a very large structure, four or five feet in diameter, and is 

 built of sticks, many of them of considerable thickness, mixed with lumps 

 of earth and masses of decayed reeds ; it is very shallow, and is lined 

 \\ ith softer materials of all kinds dry grass, moss, hair, feathers, rags, bits 

 of paper, wool, or any thing it can pick up. Incubation lasts about a 



