In my village office during the week, I looked out the window to see our two young storks perched on top of the roof of the barn. A magical calm came over me. I found myself smiling with the inner delight of a 4-year-old finding an open box of chocolates and no adults in the room.

I could watch them for hours.

Storks.

Not 4-year-olds.

My favourite bird is the graceful egret, so beautifully captured digitally locally on a near-daily basis by the wonderful photographer István Eiter. I’m a big fan. I have one of his prints. He’s worth checking out.

And I’m not alone.

In 2007, some 10,000 women in India’s Brahmaputra River Valley in the state of Assam banded together to form the Hargila Army. Their mission: to protect the endangered Greater Adjutant stork and change its image from a bad omen (it’s a scavenger) to a positive cultural symbol. They did what they set out to do. In 2023, with numbers quadrupling, the stork was moved off the endangered list and onto the near-threatened list.

Kudos to them.

It took me a while to recover from my reading of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Storks. If you’ve not read it, I’d advise against doing so.

It’s gruesome.

Truly gruesome.

And that’s from the adult me, not the child me. Ye gads!

Since one of my first Hungarian road trips, when I borrowed a mate’s car in Budapest and struck out for the Ukraine border, storks have fascinated me.

Each village we drove through had its stork’s nest. There seemed to be only one per village, as if nesting permits had been granted by some central nesting body.

In our village, Dad returns to the nest in February or March. They’re incredibly loyal, coming back to the same spot year after year.

In nearby Vörs, their stork, Kele, comes back as early as January, as he did in 2022. He’s often the first of the storks to return to Hungary. His dad, Charlie, returned every year for 14 years and now Kele has taken up the mantle. Charlie and Kele make a lie of HCA’s assertion that all storks are called Peter!

In the nest outside Kánya Ház, Dad does what renovations are needed and then, a few days later, Mom arrives.

They get busy doing what they do and Mom lays a clutch of eggs (usually four). She lays them one at a time, a couple of days apart. About 33 days later, with both Mom and Dad taking turns incubating the eggs, the first one hatches. Then the others. The younger ones don’t often win the ensuing survival of the fittest.

Our village stork had two storklings that lived this year.

The pair in the next village over had three.

It varies.

Storks are co-parenters. Both parents forage for food and return with dinner. Both give flying lessons. Both are involved.

The little ones will stay in their nests for about two months before beginning their flight training, but even though they’re learning to fly, Mom and Dad will still feed them for another couple of weeks.

Earlier this summer, when I was out picking cherries off the tree in the front garden, Dad landed on the light pole on the street. He sat for a while and looked. I said my hellos and welcomed him back. This annual chat is usually very one-sided. He’s not a talkative chap.

This year though, he started clacking like mad, throwing his head back so that it disappeared into his back. Who knew he was such a contortionist? I certainly didn’t.

My Storkish is worse than my Hungarian, so I had to look up what he was saying with what I know now is called the up-down display.

Given that the eggs were still eggs, he wasn’t protecting anyone. And as the cherries posed little by way of threat to me, I doubt he was warning me of anything. So, I have to believe he and the missus had just been frolicking in the straw.

And he was bragging.

During the week, Mom and Dad brought the two kids over. They had them walk the ridge of the barn roof, like tightrope walkers. Using their wings to balance in places, they picked their way across, from edge to centre. Their wing span is up to seven feet. It was impressive.

I sat and watched and silently cheered.

They’re not my storks.

Unlike English swans, who are owned by the King, no one owns storks. To my knowledge anyway.

But they are my storks. They’re my friends. The Storks.

From now till early September, they’ll pop by regularly.

In the city, my office window looks out onto a ventilation shaft. There, the only stork I see is the one painted for me by the talented Karl Meszlényi.

In the village, they get up close and personal.

In the village, I have a front-row seat to nature at its best.

It’s a hideously hot summer. If you’re fleeing the city to the Balaton, cast your bag away from the lake and find yourself a village. With a stork family.

Your inner clock will reset and in a few days, you’ll find yourself adapting to the slower pace of village life where things happen when they happen and not a minute before. And storks provide the entertainment.

First published in the Budapest Times 28 July 2024