Storks | Ciconiiformes

Ooievaarachtigen | Cigüeñas

Large, long-legged birds with a long neck and a heavy, long bill, which take their food while walking in shallow water, on floodplains, in grassland and on arable fields. They fly with the neck stretched out and the legs projecting well beyond the tail, on broad wings with deeply fingered tips, and cover long distances by soaring on thermals rather than by flapping; over the interior plateaux and escarpments hundreds may circle in a single thermal at once. Several species are not tied to one area but follow locust swarms, grass fires and the front of the rains. The voice box is much reduced: adults call seldom and feebly, and keep contact mainly by means of the bill. The young hatch downy but helpless and stay in the nest for weeks.

Families in this order

Storks | Ciconiidae8 speciesBill shape differs sharply between the genera and betrays the way each hunts: straight and pointed in Ciconia, for probing in shallow water and seizing prey on dry land; heavy and slightly decurved in Mycteria, swept through turbid water half open and snapped shut the moment it touches a fish; with a permanent gap between the closed mandibles in Anastomus, used to prise open the shells of water snails; huge and swollen in Ephippiorhynchus and Leptoptilos. At the nest the birds clatter the bill with the head thrown far back; this clattering takes the place of song, for the adults are all but voiceless. They void onto their own legs to keep cool, which often leaves them looking whitewashed rather than red or black. In the carrion-eating Marabou the head and neck are bare and a long inflatable throat sac hangs over the breast. The nest is a bulky heap of sticks in a tall tree, on a crag or on a pylon, reused for years; the young are fed by the parents disgorging food onto the nest floor.