MUSEUM OF PEOPLE'S FRIENDSHIP

Stork: description, beliefs

Large bird weighing up to 3.5-4 kg. It is a white bird with black wingtips, a long neck, a long thin red beak and long reddish legs. The white stork lives throughout Europe (also throughout Belarus) and Asia. Winters in India, tropical Africa.

An adult white stork gives a loud voice when a couple meets, clicking its beak. White stork chicks squeak and scream in voices similar to the meow of kittens.

Clicking its beak, the stork throws its head back and pulls its tongue back, forming a well-resonating oral cavity to amplify the sound. The clicking of its beak in a different manner practically replaced the voice communication of the stork.

Food: the stork's main food is small vertebrates and various invertebrates (frogs, toads, snakes and vipers, as well as large grasshoppers and locusts, etc.)

Reproduction: birds occupy nests for many years. They represent a large (up to 1.5 m in diameter) structure of branches. In clutch there are 1 to 7 white eggs. Chicks leave the nest after about 2 months, and become independent at 70 days of age.

Habitat: Prefers open landscapes with freestanding trees, damp meadows, swamps and bodies of water. In the cultural landscape, he builds nests on the roofs of houses and other buildings, on the poles of power lines, water towers.

There are many legends and beliefs associated with the stork. These birds have long been revered by different peoples of the world and assigned them magical properties.

The Slavs and Balts considered the stork to be a symbol of prosperity and happiness. So, if a nest appeared on the hut, the owners were waiting for consent, health and a good harvest.

Old-timers are convinced that storks settle only in good, hardworking people, and they avoid the evil and lazy at home.

In Polissya, they baked galliope - biscuits that were "treated" to storks, asking for a good harvest: "Buzko, Buzko, you have a haliope on you, and you give me rye to the cop ..."

The stork is always a positive hero of folk tales and legends. One of them tells why storks have black wings.

Once a fire broke out in the hut where the family lived with two babies. The storks that lived on the thatched roof of the house fussed and began to call for help. The parents worked in the field and could not hear what happened. Then the storks rushed into the hut and carried the children out of the fire. Since then, storks have red legs, the same beak and black wing tips, burned in a fire.

It was interesting to welcome the arrival of storks in Germany: they organized festivities, festive processions, and rung the bells. They read fairy tales to pupils instead of lessons. Crowds of children walked along the streets, everyone was having fun and having fun.

The Germans sacredly believed that if a girl first met a couple of storks in the spring, she would certainly become married this year, and if she would still walk around in girls if she was alone.

In ancient Greece, Philostratus writes, when they saw the first stork, they knelt down.

The inhabitants of Morocco believed that storks are people who arrive from a distant island in the form of birds, and when they return, they again take on a human appearance.

In Moldova, the stork is a symbol of viticulture. According to one of the legends, when the Janissaries surrounded the fortress of Gorodesty and the defenders had no food or water left, a strong wind suddenly arose. It was storks who raised a storm over the heads of their enemies with their wings. In their beaks, they brought bunches of grapes from the fields of their native land to the soldiers. The defenders of the fortress were saved and defeated the army of the janissaries.

A similar Ukrainian legend says that storks brought grapes to the Cossacks, who were imprisoned in a Tatar prison.

The Turks believed that the stork's nest was a talisman against lightning and fires.

Poles are sure that these birds, circling in the sky, scatter rain clouds.

Storks adorned the coats of arms of many Ukrainian cities, depicted them on antique works, and in Macedonia they were minted on coins.