Joker's Bottle of Frogs

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A proper stork!

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Holland has loads & loads of Herons, they're all over the place, they'll land in your postage-stamp back garden and steal your goldfish, but you only get to see a real-live Stork very occasionally. The're huge! Walking or flying. Half as big again as the Heron. Usually in pairs, there was another one hunting in this freshly mown meadow but not close enough together to get them in the same frame.

There's a local song that translates as: "on the shores of the Bruily, between Ooy & Zevenaar, a frog sat woefully, all forlorne"
it goes on a bit (as you'd imagine) and the frog explains the reason behind her sadness: " . . . . You see that Stork over there? he's your father's murderer, swallowed him down whole he did!".

This picture was taken from up on the "Ooysedijk", between Ooy & Zevenaar, a stone's throw from the "Bruily" lake. So, there may be something in that old song.

Storks (Ooievaars) are called "frog-thieves" (Kickerdief) in Dutch.

5th May 2009, 19:37

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Caine says:

Fabulous! I've never seen a stork.

5th May 2009, 19:51

Jane Doe says:

How exciting! Reminds me of a book I read as a kid, about storks nesting on wheels on chimneys in Holland? Or maybe Iit wasn't at school and I'd spent too long in a coffe house in Amsterdam?

5th May 2009, 20:41

Twiglet says:

Is that the stork who brought the baby to Boet?

5th May 2009, 21:35

hildegard says:

Would love to see a proper free-range stork. Have a dim memory of, I think, a Blue Peter slot about attempts to help storks breed in NW europe where they'd lost a lot of their former nest sites. Cue slightly wibbly presenter clinging to chimney stacks & telephone poles "helping" to build stork nesting platforms...
I'm glad they seem to have worked. :)

5th May 2009, 23:02

minkey says:

Obviously you need stork if babies need to arrive where they're supposed to...dooohhh ;-) and seeing them flying is an amazing sight. Was lucky enough to see them on a nearly daily basis over the summer in Alsace and also in Morroco. But In Holland, quite amazing

6th May 2009, 18:36

JokerXL says:

This was the third pair I've seen this year in Holland, in very different locations, so they seem to be resettling in northern Europe.
There are wagon-wheel nesting sites all over the place round here but I've not yet seen one occupied (otherwise Boet and I would be out there under a cam-net photographing them)

8th May 2009, 07:16