White Stork

Feathered Fellas

If we Reader’s Digest this entry, it will have this storyline. 

Feathered, long-legged, long-necked, plus-size mates.  

Literally living the high life.

Sticking with it.

And ending with happily-ever-after. Year after year. 

(Total aside: please tell me you’ve always wanted to use Reader’s Digest as a verb, too.)

We were traveling by bus, maybe in Cappadocia or Pamukkale in Turkey (I don't really remember where), when our guide Mele asked the driver to stop the bus. It was completely unplanned. Completely unexpected.  

Up there! she yelled. We peeked out of the bus windows.

Two white storks. 

Both were standing, ignoring us, in a large nest made of sticks about six feet in diameter and ten feet in depth that was precariously seated atop a building tower. 

Seriously.

Did I mention that they were about 95 feet up on a narrow ledge? 

But not to worry.

The high perch afforded safety as well as ease of take-off. If you had a wingspan of six to seven feet, you'd need plenty of space to spread your wings and catch the air before you dropped to the ground.

A flurry blew across as one of the storks (presumably the male), which had sat so still moments before, flew across the sky. As it floated overhead, it turned its eye downward in curiosity. It was circling above - moving in huge, lazy circles. Then, it soared. Its long, red legs dangled. Its wings were splayed wide and majestic directly above us. 

Can you hear the flapping behind the wind?

But it was quiet on the nest.

It will not always be like that, Mele explained, her lips twisting into something like a smile. After all that waiting, all that pacing...

... hatchlings will come out.

The mother and father will feed the young for several weeks after they've learned to fly, then the young are on their own, she continued. They leave the nest after a couple of months to winter in Africa.

Aww... 

Not to fret. That wasn't The End. The same time next year, the storks would come home to mate in Selçuk. It's a channeling of return-to-Capistrano, with an Asian flair. 

Did you just sigh? 

There’s going to be a new chapter. A new beginning at the very top of this same pillar. (Double sigh).

The air was crisp as the bus moved on. 

I couldn't have written the script any better if I tried.