!!!Störche

Storks: The Danube Basin and adjacent parts of Burgenland and Lower 
Austria are the second largest breeding area (after the North German 
Plain) of the white stork (Ciconia ciconia) in Central Europe. The 
first international census of 1934 revealed that storks had not 
settled in this area in larger numbers until the late 19th and early 
20th centuries. In 1934, there were 77 breeding pairs; by 1962, at the 
time when the stork population was declining rapidly in the rest of 
Central Europe, their number had increased to 393 pairs in eastern 
Austria. As their number rose, storks also started breeding in large 
parts of Styria (first evidence of a breeding pair in 1928, 85 pairs 
in 1962). A few pairs also bred temporarily in Carinthia; currently 
storks breed in Vorarlberg, Styria, Burgenland and Lower Austria. They 
return from southern Africa in March and leave Austria in August. 
Storks' nests on chimneys are a characteristic landscape feature, 
especially in Burgenland. In recent years, there has been a dramatic 
decline in the stork population on account of the reduction of 
grassland suitable for feeding. The only Central European breeding 
colony where storks still build their nests in trees, which was their 
original breeding behaviour, is near Marchegg, Lower Austria. Side by 
side with the white stork, there are also some rare black storks 
(Ciconia nigra) that breed in Carinthia, Styria, Upper Austria, 
Burgenland and Lower Austria. Since1948 Austrian ornithologists have 
ringed young storks in order to study their migration.


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