Mar 3, 2026 · 34 min · 12 segments
Isabella Tree catches up with two of the White Stork Project volunteers, Tim Morgan and Rosemary Dewan, as they prepare food for the non-flying storks in the pen at Knepp. It’s a freezing day with…
Tim MorganGuest
Isabella TreeHost
Rosemary DewanGuest
let's go back a stage and just explain perhaps you can help us understand why we have these birds these storks in a pen in the first place
sure so stokes are a colony nesting bird so they've been extinct here for hundreds of years as a breeding species Occasionally birds will cross the channel and visit the UK so storks have been seen in small numbers every year.
But to establish a breeding population because they're a colony breeding bird you need to have a set of storks here to attract the other birds in like a magnet population.
So the non-flying birds, they live in a six-acre pen and essentially act as a magnet to passing storks to say, hey, here's a safe place.
They're breeding, the ground-nesting birds are also breeding, and as their juveniles go away, they migrate away, they come back later, back to their natal site.
And they may also bring wild birds back with them or attract wild birds in, and that's the hope over time is that colony then starts to grow, the migrating birds return, wild birds join them, and the colony builds over time.
So the PEM was established in 2016 and the original birds, the non-flying birds, came from Warsaw Zoo.
And they're non-flying because they had had accidents and fallen out of nests or hit cars or power lines and had been rehabilitated by Warsaw Zoo who kindly donated them.
And so what kind of injuries do these birds have that they are living with in the pen?
They may be able to hop and jump a few steps, but there's no way their migration fit.
Much bigger home than it might have been in a small zoo environment, so they have a much richer life.
And because they have a mixed environment there, they have a stream, they have woodland, they have fields, they've also started to pair up and breed themselves now.
The chicks that are hatching are fully flight capable birds that can go on migration and do everything a stork is meant to do.
At least their offspring will be able to free fly and migrate and have a normal life.
let's go back a stage and just explain perhaps you can help us understand why we have these birds these storks in a pen in the first place
sure so stokes are a colony nesting bird so they've been extinct here for hundreds of years as a breeding species Occasionally birds will cross the channel and visit the UK so storks have been seen in small numbers every year.
But to establish a breeding population because they're a colony breeding bird you need to have a set of storks here to attract the other birds in like a magnet population.
So the non-flying birds, they live in a six-acre pen and essentially act as a magnet to passing storks to say, hey, here's a safe place.
They're breeding, the ground-nesting birds are also breeding, and as their juveniles go away, they migrate away, they come back later, back to their natal site.
And they may also bring wild birds back with them or attract wild birds in, and that's the hope over time is that colony then starts to grow, the migrating birds return, wild birds join them, and the colony builds over time.
So the PEM was established in 2016 and the original birds, the non-flying birds, came from Warsaw Zoo.
And they're non-flying because they had had accidents and fallen out of nests or hit cars or power lines and had been rehabilitated by Warsaw Zoo who kindly donated them.
And so what kind of injuries do these birds have that they are living with in the pen?
They may be able to hop and jump a few steps, but there's no way their migration fit.
Much bigger home than it might have been in a small zoo environment, so they have a much richer life.
And because they have a mixed environment there, they have a stream, they have woodland, they have fields, they've also started to pair up and breed themselves now.
The chicks that are hatching are fully flight capable birds that can go on migration and do everything a stork is meant to do.
At least their offspring will be able to free fly and migrate and have a normal life.
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