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The Saxons knew the West Sussex village of Storrington as Estorchestone, the “abode of the storks”.
But the graceful white birds disappeared from its skies more than 600 years ago, when they became extinct in Britain.
Now, after the white stork’s successful return, Storrington and the nearby Knepp estate have been designated a “European stork village”.
The accolade means the communities are now part of the European Stork Villages Network, a transnational initiative by the EuroNatur foundation to combat habitat loss for the birds.
Together, Storrington and Knepp are the 16th place in Europe to be recognised as a stork village, and the first in the UK.
The storks are thriving again on the Knepp wildland, the first major lowland rewilding project in England. A record-breaking 53 white storks fledged from wild nests here in 2024, mostly in the tops of ancient oak trees. The birds line their huge nests with soft, fibrous dung from Knepp’s free-roaming ponies.
Storks are finding the rewilded former farmland of Knepp ideal habitat, with its insect- and earthworm-rich rough meadows and wetlands providing plenty of food. Pairs are also bonding at another site in Wadhurst, East Sussex, and are frequently seen flying across the region.
The scheme to bring white storks back to Britain began in 2016, with the White Stork project, a collaboration between the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, Cotswold Wildlife Park, the Knepp estate and Wadhurst Park. First, a group of birds were introduced from Warsaw zoo to Knepp. These drew in wild birds, and the first free-flying pairs hatched chicks in the wild in 2020.
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The expanding colony migrates to Morocco for the winter months before returning to Sussex to nest.
More than a thousand schoolchildren visit Knepp each year to learn about storks and rewilding. This year, a webcam is also following one of the 15 nests already recorded this breeding season, which is set to be another record-breaker.
Isabella Tree, the owner of Knepp with her husband, Charlie Burrell, said: “I’m hoping we can get the webcam feed into hospital waiting rooms, schools, care homes, prisons and train stations this year. It’s the kind of soothing thing we should be watching instead of wall-to-wall news.”
