Ukrainian families love white storks. There is an old saying that if a stork nests on your house, it brings good luck. Many villages build special wooden platforms on top of poles just to give the storks somewhere to nest, so that they don't burn their feet on hot electric wires.
A stork nest looks like a big messy pile of sticks, but it is carefully built. It can weigh hundreds of kilograms and last for many years. The same pair of storks comes back to the same nest every spring, adding more sticks each time. Some old nests in eastern Europe have been used for over 100 years.
Storks don't sing or chirp. They make sound by clapping their long beaks together very fast - it sounds a bit like castanets. When a stork lands at its nest, it tilts its head right back and rattles its beak as a hello.
Like the black stork, white storks fly to Africa every winter. But they take a slightly different route. Each spring they fly back to Europe, and many of them come straight to Ukraine. Ukrainian children learn to spot the first stork of the year - it is a sign that warm weather is on the way.