After the evening meal a stroll through the town
(left and below)..................
In September 1998 the first German Epilepsy
museum was opened, and is - as far as we know -
the only one world-wide. The opening took place
on the occasion of the 5th colloquium "Epilepsy
in Narrative Fiction" in Kehl-Kork. Since then
the museum, which was initially accommodated in
temporary premises, has found its permanent place
in six new rooms in the Kork Craft Museum.
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The stork is the emblem of Alsace and you will
find a large stork's nest resting on top a
chimney or steeple in most of these charming
towns as well as in the neighbouring towns in
Germany on the opposite bank of the Rhine. Some
of these nests weigh as much as 500 pounds, and
are each summer the home to several large stork
eggs.
Twenty five years ago the population of this
"iconic emblem of Alsace", the bird revered for
bringing fertility and luck to any home upon
which it nested, had fallen to fewer than nine
pairs in the entire upper Rhine River Valley, an
area closely identified with the White Stork for
centuries. Conservation efforts there,
particularly by the Association for the
Protection and Reintroduction of Storks in Alsace
and Lorraine, have successfully increased the
population of birds to 270 pairs.
From the
Smithsonian's National Zoo Website, with
acknowledgement.
"Males usually arrive at the nest-site first. A
male will greet a newly arriving female with the
'head-shaking crouch' display as he lowers
himself on the nest into the incubating posture,
then erects his neck ruff and shakes his head
from side to side.
"If the male accepts the new arrival as his mate
they will cement their pair bond with an Up-Down
display. In this display the birds hold their
wings away from their sides and pump their heads
up and down. This is often accompanied by
bill-clattering. Shorter courtships may indicate
that the male and female were paired in previous
years."
"Nests are huge, bulky affairs constructed of
branches and sticks and lined with twigs,
grasses, sod, rags, and paper. Though they may be
reused year after year, breeding birds will add
to the structure each season. Particularly old
nests have grown to over 2 metres in diameter and
nearly 3 metres in depth. Some nests have been in
continuous use for hundreds of years. Both sexes
participate in nest construction with the male
bringing most of the material. Completion of the
structure is often signaled by the addition of
one leafy branch to the edge of the nest.
"European Storks have been building their nests
on man-made structures since the Middle Ages.
They can be found on rooftops, towers, chimneys,
telephone-poles, walls, haystacks, and specially
constructed nest towers. Many homeowners will add
embellishments such as wooden wagon wheels to old
chimneys to encourage storks to nest on their
houses. Nests can also be found in trees, on
cliff-ledges, or occasionally on the
ground.
"The female usually lays 3-5 eggs, more rarely
up to seven. Parents share incubation duties for
33-34 days. Young chicks are covered with white
down and have black bills. Both parents feed the
young on the nest until they fledge at 8-9 weeks
of age. Fledglings may continue to return to the
nest site each evening to beg for food from their
parents. Young birds reach sexual maturity in
their fourth year. Banding records indicate that
wild birds can live and reproduce successfully
past 30 years of age."
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