Just when you thought Derbyshire couldn’t get any more wholesome, white storks have returned to the East Midlands for the first time in more than 600 years.
Yes, actual white storks. The long-legged, red-beaked birds famous for delivering babies in fairy tales have touched down at Willington Wetlands, where conservationists are hoping they’ll help re-establish a breeding population in the region for the first time since the Middle Ages.
It’s a pretty big deal. The birds vanished from the Midlands around the 14th century thanks to a combination of habitat loss and hunting. Since then, they’ve been little more than a footnote in local wildlife history – until now.
Three storks have arrived at the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust reserve and are settling into a specially built enclosure designed to give them the best possible start. Think less “bird cage” and more “luxury countryside retreat with excellent security and room service”.
And in perhaps the most Derbyshire wildlife headline ever, they’ll be sharing the wider site with beavers, which themselves only returned to the county recently after an absence of more than 800 years.
Why Willington?
The 113-acre wetland reserve sits alongside the River Trent and has quietly become one of the East Midlands’ most exciting rewilding success stories.
Beavers have been busy engineering the landscape into a patchwork of pools, wetlands and reedbeds – exactly the sort of habitat hungry storks are looking for. Conservationists hope the resident birds will eventually attract wild storks passing along the Trent Valley and persuade them to stick around, settle down and raise a family.
In wildlife terms, it’s basically an elaborate matchmaking service.
The project has received more than £300,000 in funding from Veolia Environmental Trust, with the purpose-built enclosure designed specifically to support breeding, chick development and eventual soft releases into the wild.
The site was developed with advice from Celtic Rewilding, which runs a captive breeding programme in neighbouring Staffordshire, and has been designed to support future species restoration projects too.
In other words, the storks may be the headline act, but they could be the start of something much bigger.
You can help too
The best part? This isn’t one of those conservation projects happening behind locked gates.
Local volunteers will play a major role in restoring habitats around the site, and Derbyshire Wildlife Trust has launched a digital sightings platform where people can upload photos, videos and stork sightings as the project develops.
So if you suddenly spot a huge white bird soaring over the Trent Valley, don’t worry – you’re not hallucinating after one too many pints in the beer garden.
You’re witnessing a piece of Midlands history returning home.
