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Web Outreach: Bob Montanaro

Back in elementary school when we were wide-eyed with wonder, Sister Alexander (really Helen, but named after her father when she took her final vows,) told us all about Miriam (Mary) who, keeping with the old Mosaic law, took the infant Joshua (Jesus), seven days after he was born, to the temple and presented him to the rabbi. There, the rabbi performed the ritual to which every Jewish male baby must succumb and which the Christian Church on January 1 celebrates as the Feast of the Circumcision.

Later we learned this Holy Day, which most of the Christian world terms the “New Year,” and which the U.S. celebrates as one of its national holidays, really didn’t occur on January 1, but probably came around March 21. This was determined in 1582 when Ugo Buancompagni (Pope Gregory XIII) declared the old Julian (Roman) calendar was out of whack for many a century and that it actually took the Earth 365 plus days to circle the Sun with a “leap over” year occurring once in every four to make up for those extra hours. Most nations use the Gregorian calendar today.

This sort of straightened things out, making the New Year correspond with the end of winter, a time for beginning again, a time for planting, of celebrating and making merry along with Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. The date would fall around the 21st of March.

Modern scholars now contend that Jesus (Joshua’s Greco/Roman name) who is believed by many to be the Messiah or “the Christ” (Christos, Greek meaning “the anointed one”) was born about the middle of March in 4 BC and that the Feast of the Circumcision should fall in line with the spring or vernal equinox. But traditions die hard.

Now all this superfluous and long-winded explanation, which ends up being nothing more than what the news media calls an “epigramic lead,” is a means to ask members of the PIAS which of our feathered friends should get the honor of “Bird of the Month” title for January?

What winged-creature comes to mind as America and a good part of the rest of the world goes crazy tooting horns, wearing silly hats, greeting Bacchus with flagons of the grape and erroneously celebrating the New Year? Who brings in the young babe sporting a high hat and wearing a sash across his tiny chest? Who flaps down carrying this symbol of hope and good wishes for health and prosperity, while telling the old gent with the long beard and carrying a scythe to go “take a hike?” Why, the stork of course, and in the case of we Floridians, it’s the wood stork, sometimes known as the “wood ibis.”

There are seventeen species making up the family of birds popularly known as storks which are allied to the herons and ibises. The most familiar of these is the large, white variety Cinconia cinconia, a migratory native of the Old World. Storks live on every continent except Antarctica and most resemble each other with the exception of color and other markings along their beaks and on their legs. There is a strange looking bird however, of the genus Leptoptilis, inhabiting Indonesia. It has a long pouch or air reservoir, something like that of a pelican, hanging from its neck, which distinguishes it from all other storks. The largest stork in the world is L. dubius of India which stands over seven feet tall. It is a scavenger, considered holy, and is protected by the government.

In the New World, there are two species found only in the tropical area that ranges from southern Mexico to where the Tropic of Capricorn cuts across Brazil. These are the jabiru, with the black, naked head and the maguari which is similar to the common European white bird. Ranging more north and south of these, from the Carolinas in the U.S. to the Argentinean pampas, is the wood stork, also with a bare, black head, and which can be easily identified by Florida bird spotters. They are seen looking for food along canals, drainage ditches and other watercourses.

Most storks nest in trees and build their homes of twigs, but it is the European white that has the peculiar habit of nesting on ledges of buildings and on the peaks of houses and churches. They are thought to be symbols of fertility and good luck, and the bird, children are told, is responsible for bringing them. They are, therefore, encouraged to nest in the environs of humans.

Six to eight white eggs make up a clutch and they are laid in intervals of two. The eggs are incubated by both parents and the originally laid ones are the first to hatch, making those chicks much stronger than the last of the hatchlings. In the fight for food, therefore, those who emerge from the shell late are too weak and end up starving to death.

Storks of all species are friends of man, their favorite food being locusts and grasshoppers along with other insects. They also feed upon small rodents, fish, snails, and reptiles, including snakes and amphibians. As a result of their passion for the last group of animals and because they have been so valuable to mankind during plagues of grasshoppers and locusts, inhabitants of the two German speaking provinces of Alsace and Lorraine in France, their homeland fought over for centuries, will not serve frogs’ legs in their restaurants, leaving the tasty amphibians for the storks to dine upon.

Storks living in temperate climates will migrate in the colder months to tropical areas of the world but do not fly over large stretches of water. Those of Eastern Europe take a southeasterly course to Turkey where they then fly over the Bosporus, the narrow strait connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. Around Jordan, Syria, and Israel, they swing in a southwesterly direction, flying over Egypt and the Sudan to central Africa. Western European storks do just the opposite, flying from Denmark, Germany, France, and the Low Countries in a southwesterly direction where they join their Iberian relatives from Spain and Portugal. They then fly across the narrow Strait of Gibraltar to Morocco and wing southeast over Algeria, Niger, and Chad to their winter grounds in Africa. Sometimes the two migrating flocks cross each other in flight.

A strange legend grew out of the misunderstanding of the storks’ migration during medieval Europe. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that storks flew off to the Moon where they spent the winter months. The long, hard days toiling in the fields during summer and the arduous work encountered in September’s harvest were now over. Couples could relax and enjoy themselves. There was much drinking and it was the time for festivals. When the storks returned from the Moon about nine months later around the middle of June and when most of the children were born, they were believed to have somehow been responsible for bringing the babies with them. Hence the answer to the question every young child at one time in its life asks of its mother or father.

Material source – Funk and Wagnalls Wildlife Encyclopedia
Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia