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Saturday, June 16, 2018

The Neighbors

In the summer of 2014, I worried deeply about a family I left behind in Margariti, Greece. They seemed to need a little more help than the other families. They were living outside our balcony window, atop the electric pole. A family of storks.

Storks choose one mate for life. They raise their children together in one nest and if something happens to one of them, the other stays alone for the rest of its life.

When I first arrived in Margariti in 1983, the stork nests dominated the scenery. They were everywhere.
This giant nest on the old house was the residence of the first stork couple with whom I would become well acquainted. The sound of their clacking beaks each morning was part of the countryside cacophony. They would swoop down to pick up snakes and other tasty treats or fly off to the lake and return with their prey squiggling in their beaks. They often landed beside the house to peck at dried sticks and grass, choosing carefully for their nest, a nest that would soon contain a few chicks watching in awe as the adults took flight.

The children had black beaks in contrast to the red adult-beaks which indicated that they were too young to fly. But by the end of August those beaks were adolescent pink. So the young  birds began their hesitant departures from the nest. First in small circles--wobbling through the air with their parents gliding gracefully nearby, later flying far from the nest, away from the watchful eyes.

The storks' annual departure was one made for a Hitchcock movie as it all happened within twenty-four hours. It was a bit eery. In one afternoon, all the swallows that had lived under the balconies and the eaves of the village houses, would line the electric wires. It was an unofficial signal that the end to the summer was at hand.  The very next day, both the swallows and the storks would be gone--on their way to Africa. We'd awaken without the noise of those clacking beaks that had been present every morning before, and every nest, stork and swallow, would be completely empty.

Then and now, the storks mostly prefer electricity poles for a building location secure from predators. You can see one in the 1983 photo to the right.

But occasionally one or two might be electrocuted when wet straw of their nest touched a live wire. As a result, the village government put large plastic containers at the top of the poles and the birds learned to build their nests inside those protective containers.

That nest in the photo is now across from our present-day balcony. We watched that same couple raise their little ones over many years, the children flying away, the parents moving to Africa for the winter and then returning to the same nest each summer to raise a new batch of babies--a cycle renewed. I didn't think much about it until a few years ago when one stork came back alone. That bird sat by itself in the nest all summer and again the following summer until one year no bird returned and the nest was left empty for several years.

However, in the summer of 2014, a new young stork started checking out that location. Eventually there were two of them and they  worked to fill the plastic container with straw and sticks.  It was a little late in the summer for setting up house, so at first I thought they were just using that pole to rest.


I snapped a photo of the reflection in the balcony door, a sort of clandestine move on my part. I was so excited to see a new young mother moving in, I  didn't want her to know I was spying.  You can see her working with the beginnings of a nest. And a few weeks later there were baby birds in that nest.

I watched them each morning as they grew, but when the swallows lined the electric wires, those babies still had not left the nest. And the next day when every swallow and stork nest was supposed to be vacant, that one family was still there. On our last day in Margariti, I saw the baby birds being taught to fly. I hoped they were able to make it down to Africa without the help of the flock. I tend to think the parents, with their adventurous spirit, having waited longer than the rest of the flock to have their children, were resourceful enough to get the family south. I thought about them all that winter.

I'm guessing they made it there  because the parents returned and took up residence again the following summer, and the one after that, each time producing one or two offspring. And this year they are back.

It appears we have neighbors who love to return as often as we do . . .  and who can blame them? It's a perfect location to spend the summer!





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