The white stork belongs to the large Order Ciconiiformes. Males and females can be extremely difficult to differentiate between. The female stork is often somewhat smaller, her beak slightly less bulky and her weight slightly lower. The differences are, however, hardly recognisable.

A stork is approx. 150 cm long when full extended and weighs approx. 3 to 4 kg. Its beak length is between 15 and 20 cm and the wingspan is up to 200 cm.

Storks become approx. 30 years old and at their prime at between 12 and 20 years of age.

Storks only breed once a year. Both adult birds alternate when hatching and breeding the young. While the one is warming the eggs, the other is off searching for food. A family of storks requires approx. 4 to 6 kg food a day!

The young storks hatch after 32 to 34 days and only weigh approx. 65 to 80 g. The chick already weighs over 2 kg after 30 days. After 60 days the young stork is full-grown, spreads its wings and attempts its first flight - it's fully fledged. The young storks differentiate from the parent storks at this point in time due to their grey beaks, which only turn red at a later stage in development.

The storks arrive in Rust at the end of March/beginning of April after a flight route of approx. 10,000 km. This flight route is tackled in approx. three months during autumn migration and in just two months during spring migration. They winter in South Africa. On approx. 20 August the storks leave their summer quarters again. Young storks do not return to their place of birth until the age of three. From this time on they have reached sexual maturity.

Storks have been sighted in Rust since approx. 1900. Up to 40 pairs were breeding here in at the beginning of the 1960's.

There are various reasons for the decline in the stork population in the 1980's: the huge plagues of grasshoppers in the winter quarters in Africa were, among others, responsible. The plague was combated using poison and thus caused destruction on a massive scale. The stork absorbed the poisons itself while eating the poisoned insects.

And food availability in our climes has declined due to the drying up of marsh areas on the one hand and intensive monocultures (viticulture) on the other. These two factors have resulted in the disappearance of many "pests", which were important for preserving the food chain.

Furthermore, the eel was released in Lake Neusiedl. It is a spawn predator and eats frogs and fish spawn like the stork. It has been prohibited to release eels into the lake since 2004.

The reed belt has grown heavily since the lowering of the water level of Lake Neusiedl (also due to the construction of the Einser Canal). Agriculture has also become more inefficient and many fields have been left unmanaged and not been mown, thus removing the stork's opportunity for starting and landing. Furthermore, markings and counts have shown that only a maximum of 20% of the storks return.

The Rust stork protection programme was founded together with the WWF back in 1987. This programme contains relatively simple measures to reincrease the stork population. The pastures near the lake have been used for grazing again: cattle spend 5 - 6 months a year on the pasture where they keep the grass short and contain the growth of reeds. The cattle's movements on the pastures and the manure have once again attracted many microbes, which are a must on the stork's menu.

This programme contributed to the fact that wading birds and grey geese, which have become increasingly rare in our climes, are now stopping off here for the summer. The current stork population has stabilised to about 10 pairs.