Cheeky storks in North Bohemia built their nest with stolen underwear, swimsuits

Some birds are known for stealing things. Crows in particular have a bad reputation for seeking shiny objects. Storks, on the other hand, are associated with motherhood and generally above suspicion.

One stork in Zoopark Chomutov in the Ústí nad Labem district of Northern Bohemia has called that squeeky clean reputation into question by building its nest out of scavenged swimsuits, brassieres, underwear, a t-shirt, and other items of clothes. In all, there were dozens of pilfered items.

The salacious discovery began innocently enough. Zoo staff wanted to check the nest for stability and for items that could cause harm to the birds. Fishing lines, wire, plastic, and other debris often wind up mixed with the large twigs that storks use as building material.

While this particular collection is noteworthy, the use of foreign objects in building nests is not a complete rarity. “Some [storks] carry such things to the nest, although not all of them. But this collection was very varied and interesting,” Zoopark Chomutov ornithologist Petr Hora said.

The stork’s peculiar taste has a mundane explanation. There are two natural swimming areas near the nest. “If someone forgets a swimsuit there, for example, it's an interesting thing for storks to build a nest with,” Hora said.

The zoo issued a press release and reposted pictures on its Facebook page on March 5, but the story of the stork and its fetishistic behavior had been circulating since late January, appearing in the media in Slovakia and Latvia.

“The [original] post was shared and commented on by people from all over the country, it also appeared in professional media, and in the end it also crossed the borders of the Czech Republic," Zoopark Chomutov director Věra Fryčová said.

The Jan. 21 post had over 1,000 shares and 1,500 likes. People in the comments found the situation humorous, and suggested it could be used a new excuse to explain missing clothes to a suspicious spouse. Others drew political analogies, as Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has been caught up in a scandal related to EU funds and a building called the Stork’s Nest (Čapí hnízdo).

Human clothing can be dangerous for birds, especially for young. All of the items had to be removed from the nest in the interest of safety,

Storks have been nesting in the zoo for almost 40 years. They currently have a nest on top of the trunk of an oak tree near a pond. The female of the pair at Zoopark Chomutov remained there all winter, as is usual for the species.

The male returned Feb. 26. “The annual reunion of a stork pair is thus not only a symbol of the end of winter for us in the zoo, but also a reason to rejoice that the male has happily returned from a distant wintering ground,” Zoopark Chomutov said on Facebook at the time.

There are both white storks and black storks in the Czech Republic. Both are specially protected as an endangered species. There are about 900 nesting pairs of white storks in the country. Black storks are more rare, with an estimated 300 to 400 pairs.