Alias old stork, belonging to stork family, scientific name is ixobrychus minutus.

Large wading birds. The total length is about120cm. The feathers of the body are white. The eyes are red, and there are ornaments on the lower part of the front neck. Shoulder feathers, wing feathers and flying feathers are black and shiny. The mouth is long, thick and black. Legs and feet are red.

Wading in swamps, wetlands and ponds for food. Mainly eat fish. Frogs, insects, etc. Quiet and alert, slow when flying or walking, and often stand on one foot when resting. Breeding began in March, and nests were built on tall trees or buildings. Each nest produced 3-5 white eggs. Male and female birds take turns incubating eggs for about 30 days.

There are about 2,500 ~ 3,000 oriental storks in China. Breeding in the north-central part of Northeast China; Overwintering in the lower reaches and south of the Yangtze River.

It belongs to the national first-class protected animals.

Oriental stork is a large wading bird with beautiful posture. Its body length is 1 10- 128 cm and its weight is 3.9-4.5 kg. The long and stout mouth is very hard and black, with only lavender or crimson at the bottom. The bottom of the mouth is thicker, tapering to the tip of the mouth and slightly upturned. The exposed skin around the eyes, eyes and throat is scarlet, the iris in the eyes is pink and the outer ring is black. The feathers on the body are mainly pure white. The wings are wide and long, and the big feathers, primary feathers, primary flight feathers and secondary flight feathers on them are all black with green or purple luster. The base of the primary flight feather is white, and the outer parts of the internal primary flight feather and secondary flight feather are silver-gray except the feather edge and tip, and gradually turn black inward. There are long lanceolate feathers on the lower part of the front neck, which can stand upright when courting and showing off. Legs and feet are long and bright red.

Oriental white stork has no subspecies differentiation, and its breeding places are mainly in southeast Russia and northeast China. Before World War II, they were still breeding in Korea, South Korea and Japan. The wintering areas are mainly in East China, South China and Southwest China, with a few in South Korea, Japan and Ryukyu Islands, and occasionally drifting to Yakutsk, Sakhalin Island, Bangladesh and India.

Oriental storks mainly inhabit open and remote plains, grasslands and swamps during the breeding season, especially rivers, lakes and ponds with sparse trees, as well as canals and swamps. Sometimes they inhabit and move in rice fields with trees on the banks of rivers far from residential areas. In winter, it mainly inhabits large open lakes and swamps. In addition to the pair activities in the breeding season, most of the other seasons form group activities, especially in the migration season, which often gather into dozens or even hundreds of large groups. When foraging, they often walk in pairs or groups of three or five on the water's edge, grass and swamp, walking lightly and proudly, pecking while walking. When resting, you often stand on the beach or the grass by the water with one leg or two legs, and your neck shrinks into an S-shape. Sometimes I like flying and hovering over my habitat. When taking off on the ground, you need to run a distance first, stir your wings hard and get a certain lift before you can fly. When flying, the neck is straight forward, and the legs and feet extend behind the tail feathers. The tail feathers are fanned out, and the primary flying feathers are scattered and staggered up and down. It can not only fly with flapping wings, but also hover and glide in the air with hot air, and its posture is light and beautiful. It is alert and timid, and often avoids crowds. If someone invades the territory, it will make a "click-click" mouth sound with its upper and lower mouths, and show a series of unique threatening behaviors. Its neck is straight, its head leans back, then it stretches down and swings from side to side, its wings are half open, its tail feathers are upright, and its feet keep walking.

Fish accounts for more than 79-90% of the total food of oriental storks, and the largest individual of fish can reach more than 0.5 kg. However, with the different seasons, the content of feeding has also changed. In winter and spring, they mainly feed on plant seeds, leaves, grass roots, mosses and a small amount of fish. There are many kinds of food in summer, mainly fish, but there are also animal foods such as frogs, mice, snakes, lizards, snails, mollusks, arthropods, crustaceans, annelids, insects and larvae, and chickens. In autumn, they also prey on a large number of locusts. In addition, they often eat some gravel and pebbles to help digest food. Foraging is mainly in the daytime, with the most frequent activities at 6-7 am and 4-6 pm. At noon, they rest in trees or hover and glide over the territory. The range of foraging activities in the breeding season is about 500 meters, and food shortage often flies to 1-2 kilometers, or even 5-6 kilometers away for foraging. In spring and summer, they mostly eat alone or in pairs, while in autumn and winter, they mostly eat in small groups. Looking for food on the ground mainly depends on vision, often stretching his neck and hanging his head, walking slowly and striding on the ground while looking around, moving forward quickly and pecking quickly after finding food. Feeding in water is mainly through touch. Usually, you walk alone in shallow water near the water, and sometimes you get into belly-deep water. While walking slowly, you insert your half-opened mouth into the water from time to time. The number of times you put your mouth into the water is generally more than 65,438+07 times per minute. On average, 1- 1.5 food can be caught every 5 minutes, and the success rate of predation can reach 65.

Oriental white storks began to leave the breeding ground from the end of September to the beginning of 10, and migrated southward in droves. Migration often gathers in open grassland lakes and reeds, and it is necessary to choose suitable places to stay along the way, and some places can stay for more than 40 days. In the process of migration, it mainly flies by flapping its wings and glides by using the rising hot airflow. The migration time is in the daytime, and most of the time is from 10 to 3 pm, when the temperature is the highest. Most of the migration routes are along plains, rivers and coastlines, but it is not clear whether there are different migration routes in spring and autumn.

Oriental storks used to be a common bird in East Asia, and even appeared on the roof of a church in Tokyo, Japan. However, during the period of 1868- 1395, due to illegal hunting, pesticide and chemical poison pollution, the population of oriental stork in Japan gradually decreased, and now only a few wintering individuals can be found occasionally in winter. Breeding populations distributed in North Korea and South Korea also became extinct in the early 1970s. Due to the dense population and the development of industry and agriculture, the remaining breeding grounds in the Russian Far East and Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces in the northeast of China have also become extremely narrow, with a total of about 3,000. 1994, more than 900 wintering groups were found in Shenhu Lake, Wuhan, Hubei Province, which is the largest oriental stork group found so far.