Classroom lesson 路 Wildlife馃嚛馃嚜 Germany

White stork

A black-and-white bird that flies 10,000 km every year

A white stork with black wings and a red beak walking in a meadow

Photo 路 Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

The white stork is a tall, elegant bird with bright white feathers, black wing tips, long red legs and a long red beak. In summer they live in Germany, building huge nests on rooftops and chimneys. In autumn they fly all the way to Africa for the winter - a journey of around 10,000 kilometres.

Tell me more

White storks build the biggest nests of any bird you might see in Germany. A nest can be 2 metres wide and weigh almost a tonne. They build them out of sticks on top of roofs, chimneys, church towers and even electricity poles. The same pair of storks often comes back to the same nest year after year.

When a stork chick hatches, it stays in the nest for about two months while the parents fly back and forth bringing food - frogs, worms, mice, fish. Both parents take turns. By the end of summer, the chicks are almost as big as their parents and ready to fly.

Then comes the most amazing thing they do. Every autumn, white storks gather in big groups and fly south - all the way from Germany to Africa. The trip is around 10,000 kilometres, and many of them go as far south as the grasslands south of the Sahara. In spring, they fly all the way back. They live on two continents.

Storks find their way without maps. Scientists think they use the sun, the stars, and even small magnetic signals from the Earth itself - like an in-built compass. Young storks fly the route for the first time without ever having been told the way.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01How do you think a young stork, on its very first journey, knows the way to Africa?
  2. 02Storks build nests on roofs and chimneys. What animals share buildings with humans where you live?
  3. 03If you could fly with a stork from Germany to Africa, what would you most want to see along the way?
Try this

Classroom activity

On a world map, draw the stork route from Germany to central Africa. Use a ruler to measure: how many times longer is that than the longest journey anyone in your class has ever taken?