Which birds offer the most remarkable spectacle in the northern hemisphere? A majestically soaring golden eagle? A gabbling overhead flock of geese or swans? Perhaps it’s a shock glimpse of a golden oriole or the elusive nightjar.

However, it could just as easily be a huge white stork ( Ciconia ciconia ), although, as with orioles, sightings of them in this country have been so scarce that the older guidebooks to the birds of Britain don’t even bother to include them.

In one of Nature’s unlikeliest myths, it was once maintained that storks were republicans. The suggestion was proposed to explain why they shunned breeding in Britain and yet nested in Holland, as well as other places in Europe no longer retaining a ruling royal family. The absurd notion was banished in 2020 with news tha

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