You know them, the Dominomus, the McFlurry hedgehog and the CERN marten, masterpieces of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam. But the mother of all dead animals with a story is a German stork. The bird was killed and preserved on May 21, 1822, two hundred years ago next Saturday. He was shot by Christian Ludwig Reichsgraf von Bothmer at his Mecklenburg estate for something remarkable: an eight foot long arrow that had pierced the stork’s neck lengthwise from back to front and jutted out just below the head, apparently devoid of vitality. touch body parts.
The bird was mounted with arrows and included in the zoological collection of the University of Rostock, where of the Pfeilstorch (stork stork) is still preserved and has been attracting more and more visitors in recent years as a famous museum piece: “In 2019 there were 20,000”, e-mails Sören Möller, spokesperson for the institute.
Due to the corona measures that had only recently been lifted in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a major two-century celebration could not be organized, “but on May 18, Professor Stefan Richter will give the public lecture 200 Jahre Rostocker Pfeilstorch – wohin die Vögel im Winter?†
fiberglass arrow
That question (where birds migrate in winter) was answered only two hundred years ago thanks to the arrow stork. The arrow made of hardwood with an iron tip fixed in the shaft with plant fibers turned out to be from Central Africa and was the first hard evidence that storks hibernate there. Before that it was known that some bird species disappeared in the autumn and returned in the spring, but Aristotle’s view that they spend the winter temporarily sedated in holes, crevices and in the mud has lasted for an incredibly long time.
There are now 35 well-documented storks from eight European and three African countries and one from Israel. From the Netherlands we know a striated stork from the Betuwe in 1785 “which had a broken pyl, similar in shape to that of some Indies Peoples, sitting in one of the wings at the bottom”.
A turning point came in 1971 when a nesting stork was seen in Vienna that had been pierced with an Italian-made fiberglass arrow. Traditional bow and arrow hunting eventually gave way to firearms shooting. Today, migratory storks in countries around the Mediterranean are still being shot in droves and they also have a new enemy: plastic waste in which they become entangled in mailman’s elastics lying around with which they feed their young.
Ultimately, only two complete arrow storks and five individual arrows have survived. A beautiful replica has been made of the example from 1822, which has been on permanent display in Bothmer Castle since 2018. For the 200-year-old original, head to Rostock.
Zoologischen Sammlung, Universitätsplatz 2, Rostock | open workdays 10:00-16:00, entrance free