Hungary's favorite bird is more than just a good luck charm

Spring is a great time for birdwatchers, and one of the easiest birds to spot is the stork. These graceful birds are extremely comfortable living amongst humans and bring extra character to quaint villages all over Hungary. And people like them too, they bring babies and protect houses against fire.

Late march and early April mark the annual arrival of storks to their summer homes in Europe. There are two varieties indigenous to Hungary, the White Stork (Fehér Gólya) and the Black Stork (Fekete Gólya). Both are protected and worth a trip out of the city to see.

Both White and Black Storks spend March to October here before heading south to sub-Saharan Africa. Black storks are reclusive, forest- and marsh-dwelling birds so you are likelier to see the more common White Stork (Ciconia ciconia), with its long red legs, pointed bill, white body and black tipped wings. White storks are anything but reclusive. They traditionally built their nests on houses but have more recently moved to telephone poles. Today, it is estimated that 80% of stork couples nest on telephone poles. It remains a mystery to experts why storks like to live among people, but it certainly makes them easy to find and very photogenic.

There are three ways to see White Storks in Hungary: Choose a Hungarian village near UNESCO World Heritage site Hortobágy Puszta that you have always wanted to visit, explore a wildlife reserve or, if you have time, both.

Generally speaking, it is easy to locate stork inhabited areas. Storks are very loyal to their nests and return to them year after year. In fact, some nesting sites are hundreds of years old.  In other words, if a village has nests, it will continue to have them. In addition, the stork's most important habitat is the Carpathian Basin, the area where Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia (northern Serbia) meet. Around half of the population live in this area.

Gergő Halmos from the Hungarian Ornithological and Nature Conservation Society (Magyar Madártani és Természetvédelmi Egyesület) says that you are guaranteed to find stork nests in villages anywhere along the border of Ukraine, Hungary, Romania and Serbia. To make things easier, the Society maintains a database in Hungarian of 5,400 nest locations throughout country.

Hajós and Császártöltés are great examples of villages offering a humans' eye view of the sightly birds and their nests. These picturesque settlements are also near the protected marsh of Vörös-mocsár. Mezőkövesd and Tiszadorogma were built on flood plains home to a plethora of flora and fauna and the town of Gyula near the Romanian border is a great place to combine a soak in the baths with some birdwatching. As you drive or walk through the middle of town, you will see untidy nests perched on poles and rooftops. The birds live on small animals and can sometimes be seen swopping down on prey.

Because of their village lifestyle, wildlife parks are not necessarily the best places to track down White Storks, but they do offer access to the shyer Black Stork and a variety of other birds, plants and animals. The best reserves to visit are the Hortobágyi Nemzeti Park, the Kiskunság National Park and the Gemenc area of the Duna-Dráva National Park.

Though it is easy to take the stork for granted as a typical feature of the Hungarian landscape, the reality is that storks are protected animals and face endangerment. As a result of modernization, many storks die from falling into the electrical wires on telephone and electricity poles. In the 80’s, Hungary installed around 2,000 special nest-supports  but this program ended and new supports are slow to be installed. Hungary currently participates in the White Stork Protection in the Carpathian Basin program, a cross-border environmental project sponsored by the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe. The initiative works to establish mutual agreements with electricity companies.

Halmos says that many more Hungarians are beginning to participate in bird conservation as a result of new projects and growing appreciation of the stork. "For cultural reasons, the White Stork is quite an important bird in Hungary and it is the species best known by the average person."

So, when spring finally comes, pick up your binoculars and take a ride into the countryside to check up on Hungary’s feathered friends. They’ll probably see you watching, and most likely strike a pose for the camera.

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