A competition to find Europe’s largest and heaviest stork nest has finished with the results revealing some weighing more than a ton. Others exceeded 2-metres in both height and diameter.
Initiated by the University of Białystok as part of a science promotion project called ‘You will not lift it! Promotion of the stork nest mass calculator’, researchers examined 27 nests in Poland, Spain, Croatia, Italy, the Netherlands and Belarus.
The top ten of largest nest were: Dubno in northern Podlasie (2 m high, 2.5 m wide), in Złaków Kościelny (2.3 m by 1.5 m), Urzecze (1.2 m by 1.8 m ) and Sobień Szlachecki (2 by 2 meters) in the Łódź province, Ujeździec Wielki (1.8 m by 1.5 m) in Lower Silesia, Nawiady (1.7 m by 1.5 m) and Zabrost Wielki (1.3 m by 1.6 m, mass of 964 kg) in the Warmian -Masurian province, in Węgielnia in the Suwałki region (1.7 m by 1.6 m), in Earnewâld in the Netherlands (2.2 m by 0.95 m) and in Belarus – in the villages Druya (1.5 m by 2.5 m), Malaja Berestovitsa (1.5 by 1.5 m) and in Orsha District (1.75 by 1.5 m).
The nests could reach such great sizes because most of them are located on unused objects such as ruins of buildings, old pressure towers, free-standing poles. The average weight of a stork nest in Poland is almost 400 kilograms.