White stork is Lithuanian national bird. People say that if this bird made a nest near your house, in your territory- it’s a sign of luck.

The White Stork (Ciconia ciconia) is a farmland bird that settles in the vicinity of areas where people live. White Storks are active mainly during the day. They consume a wide variety of animal prey. They prefer to forage in meadows, pastures, and swamps. Common food items include insects, invertebrates, fish, amphibians, eggs and young birds of ground nesting birds, sometimes - rats, mice, various reptiles. Frogs represent only minor part of the diet.

White Storks usually nest on buildings, poles, water towers, top of trees. People help storks to settle by installing pedestals of nest. The birds bring quite large branches then and build nests of hay balls, turf, dry manure, etc. White Storks build their nest continuously, even when stork chicks grow. While livingin nests and repairing them White Storks assemble quite a large structure, which sometimes suffer from storks fighting and strong winds.

Storks usually lay 3-5 white eggs. Both male and female stork incubates the eggs that hatch in 31-34 days. Stork chicks are fed by both parents and before leaving the nest (after 53-55 days) fly with them about 2 weeks.

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