White Storks

60 x 30cm
Oil on Canvas
The White Storks painting was produced for the first White Stork and Nature Revival Festival held in Storrington in May 2025.
Storrington was announced as the White Stork village in the UK.  Storrington has close ties to the White Stork Project at Knepp Castle.

Contact Alison about this painting

White Storks once bred in Britain and have a close association with Sussex. The Saxon name for Storrington is ‘Estorchestone’ which means ‘the village of the storks’.  Storrington village emblem features a pair of white storks.

Storks can now been seen flying around the Sussex skies near Knepp Castle after their reintroduction in 2016.

Non flying founding birds were rescued and rehabilitated in Poland after accidents on the roads or with power lines. Some of these were donated to the UK by Warsaw Zoo.  The birds are kept in large open top pens in 3 locations in the UK where they can breed safely on the ground and their offspring can fly free. The offspring join wild storks on migration across Europe.

There are two locations in the South where storks live, Knepp Castle in West Sussex and Wadhurst Park in East Sussex. They are also kept at Cotswold Wildlife Park.

In 2020 three nests were built in the wild at Knepp Castle and four chicks successfully fledge. In 2025 a total of 45 storks fledge from the wild at Knepp.