The collision on the A28 near Staphorst last Tuesday is said to have been caused by the storks in a nest above the highway. That is what police officers who spoke to RTV Oost immediately after the accident said to those involved.
One of the drivers looked at the storks in the nest and did not pay attention to the other traffic. According to stork expert Frits Koopman, Rijkswaterstaat should install signs. “Look at the road and not at the sky!”
According to Koopman, such signs have been placed on the highways around Schiphol Airport. Accidents sometimes happened there too because people were more concerned with air traffic than with the traffic around them. “Because you really can’t get those storks out of there. Once there has been a nest, they come back to the same place every year. And if they have to, they just build the nest all over again.”
Frits Koopman has been running the stork station De Lokkerij in the Wijk near Meppel for over forty years. When he started the station in 1981, there were hardly any storks in the Netherlands. De Lokkerij now has about sixty permanent nests and hundreds of storks live in the immediate vicinity. “They are extremely stable and loyal to their nests. If you don’t want such a nest, you have to intervene immediately in February. You have to remove the branches every day, but even then I fear that the stork will beat you. And once there is there is a nest, then it is forbidden to remove it.”
The breeding season has started and then the activity around those nests is great. Storks fly back and forth, because the young have to eat. “Storks alternate with brooding, when one sits on the eggs, the other goes looking for food. So there are a lot of flight movements during this period. I can well imagine that motorists get distracted from that, because they are impressive big birds.”
According to Koopman, it is certainly not the first time that a collision has happened thanks to the storks. “That happens every year, especially at that nest on the A28 near Staphorst. And they also suffer from it at the railways. I think you will find forty nests on the line between Meppel and Hoogeveen. All built on the overhead lines of the route.”
The NS conducts all kinds of experiments to prevent storks from building a nest on the railway. So far this has had little success. “A few years ago they built very nice stork nests a short distance from the railway. The idea was that the storks might nest there. But the birds used those beautiful nests to remove branches to strengthen their own nest And now those nesting poles are standing there idly.”
Koopman has to chuckle a bit. “And the problem gets a little bigger every year, of course. Because the young also need a nest the following year and they also like to look for one near the nest where they were born.”
At the stork station, Koopman learned that storks are also social animals. “Where a stork already lives, it will be safe there. There will also be enough food, otherwise the storks would not live there. And so a stork attracts new comrades and you see more and more in this region.”
Rijkswaterstaat is no longer surprised by stork nests above the highways. According to a spokesman, they are only removed if they hang directly above a lane. “Because then it can pose a risk to road safety. Let’s leave nests that are built next to the lanes. Removing them takes a lot of time and effort.” In addition, nests should only be removed outside of the breeding season.
In the garden of his stork station in the Wijk, Frits Koopman points up at a tree. See that nest? There was only a small stump on that tree, but they manage to build a whole nest around that trunk. This is now the third year that they are there and it has already become quite a structure. I estimate that that nest just weighs two thousand kilos in the meantime.” And you don’t want that weight right above a roadway.