High Flyers

Every year the European storks travel from Germany and other parts of that continent south to Africa in the winter and then back again in the spring. Usually we see a few of them who have stopped off in our fields for rest over night before continuing on the next day. This year we've seen them daily in flocks of ten to twenty birds on their northward flight. I don't know why there are so many more of them this year unless the wind currents have changed a bit. The storks will be out in the fields early in the morning and then as the air heats up they catch the thermals soaring up gradually in spirals until they reach almost 20 thousand feet where they catch the northbound jet streams. On the ground they are ungainly, tall (a metre) but light weight, but in the air they are extraordinary.