What type of bird brings babies

The parents will return when they hear the baby cry. Fledglings are learning to fly, so they do not stay in the nest. If a fledgling is found, please leave it alone. If it is on the ground, put it in a bush so that it is less vulnerable.

The parents are not always with the baby because they are looking for food to feed it. Again, touching it will not harm it or cause the parents to reject it. Baby birds should be taken in only if one of the following occurs: both parents are positively dead, the baby is injured, or the baby is in real danger. Somewhere along the way, storks may have become a substitute for this bird. Whatever the origins of the myth, historians tend to agree that the idea of the baby-bringing stork was most firmly established in northern Europe, particularly Germany and Norway.

During the Pagan era, which can be traced back at least to medieval times more than years ago, it was common for couples to wed during the annual summer solstice , because summer was associated with fertility. At the same time, storks would commence their annual migration, flying all the way from Europe to Africa.

The birds would then return the following spring — exactly nine months later. Storks "would migrate and then return to have their chicks in spring around the same time that a lot of babies were born," Warren Chadd said. Thus, storks became the heralds of new life, spawning the fanciful idea that they had delivered the human babies.

As the story evolved over time, its complexity grew. In Norse mythology, storks came to symbolize family values and purity based largely on the inaccurate belief that these birds were monogamous. In the Netherlands, Germany and eastern Europe, storks nesting on the roof of a household were believed to bring good luck — and the possibility of new birth — to the family below, Warren Chadd wrote in her book.

However, they are migratory birds, and were often gone for around nine months out of the year. This had the obvious tie-in to human gestation, but also helped add a bit of mystery to the birds, versus the mundane and often annoying reputation of pigeons. It was thought that storks would fly to some mysterious land where they could pick up infants to bring back to their future mothers and fathers.

When nosy kids asked where exactly the storks were coming up with babies, the answer was apparently the forests and woods of Europe.