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The white stork (''Ciconia ciconia'') is a large bird in the stork family Ciconiidae. Its plumage is mainly white, with black on its wings. Adults have long red legs and long pointed red beaks, and measure on average from beak tip to end of tail, with a wingspan. The two subspecies, which differ slightly in size, breed in Europe (north to Finland), northwestern Africa, southwestern Asia (east to southern Kazakhstan) and southern Africa. The white stork is a long-distance migrant, wintering in Africa from tropical Sub-Saharan Africa to as far south as South Africa, or on the Indian subcontinent. When migrating between Europe and Africa, it avoids crossing the Mediterranean Sea and detours via the Levant in the east or the Strait of Gibraltar in the west, because the air thermals on which it depends do not form over water. A carnivore, the white stork eats a wide range of animal prey, including insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals and small birds. It takes most of its food from the ground, among low vegetation, and from shallow water. It is a monogamous breeder, but does not pair for life. Both members of the pair build a large stick nest, which may be used for several years. Each year the female can lay one clutch of usually four eggs, which hatch asynchronously 33–34 days after being laid. Both parents take turns incubating the eggs and both feed the young. The young leave the nest 58–64 days after hatching, and continue to be fed by the parents for a further 7–20 days. The white stork has been rated as least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It benefited from human activities during the Middle Ages as woodland was cleared, but changes in farming methods and industrialisation saw it decline and disappear from parts of Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Conservation and reintroduction programs across Europe have resulted in the white stork resuming breeding in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Sweden. It has few natural predators, but may harbour several types of parasite; the plumage is home to chewing lice and feather mites, while the large nests maintain a diverse range of mesostigmatic mites. This conspicuous species has given rise to many legends across its range, of which the best-known is the story of babies being brought by storks. == Taxonomy and evolution == The white stork was one of the many bird species originally described by Linnaeus in the landmark 1758 10th edition of his ''Systema Naturae'', where it was given the binomial name of ''Ardea ciconia''. It was reclassified to (and was designated the type species of) the new genus ''Ciconia'' by French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. Both the genus and specific epithet, ''cǐcōnia'', are the Latin word for "stork", originally recorded in the works of Horace and Ovid. The Latin word survives in most Romance languages (''cicogna'', ''cigüeña'', ''cegonha'' and the like). The word ''stork'' is derived from the Old English word ''storc'', and appeared in the 10th-century works the ''Erfurt Glossary'', where the word is equated with ''Ciconia'', and Aelfric's ''Homilies''. The word is related to the Old High German ''storah'', "stork", and similar words in many other European languages, all of which are descended from the Germanic ''sturko-z''. There are two subspecies: * ''C. c. ciconia'', the nominate subspecies described by Linnaeus in 1758, breeds from Europe to northwest Africa and westernmost Asia, and in southern Africa, and winters mainly in Africa south of the Sahara Desert, though some birds winter in India. * ''C. c. asiatica'', described by Russian naturalist Nikolai Severtzov in 1873, breeds in Turkestan and winters from Iran to India. It is slightly larger than the nominate subspecies. The stork family contains six genera in three broad groups: the open-billed and wood storks (''Mycteria'' and ''Anastomus''), the giant storks (''Ephippiorhynchus'', ''Jabiru'' and ''Leptoptilos''), and the "typical" storks, ''Ciconia''. The typical storks include the white stork and six other extant species, which are characterised by straight pointed beaks and mainly black and white plumage. Its closest relatives are the larger, black-billed Oriental white stork (''Ciconia boyciana'') of East Asia, which was formerly classified as a subspecies of the white stork, and the maguari stork (''C. maguari'') of South America. Close evolutionary relationships within ''Ciconia'' are suggested by behavioural similarities and, biochemically, through analysis of both mitochondrial cytochrome ''b'' gene sequences and DNA-DNA hybridization. A ''Ciconia'' fossil representing the distal end of a right humerus has been recovered from Miocene beds of Rusinga Island, Lake Victoria, Kenya.〔 The 24–6 million year old fossil could have originated from either a white stork or a black stork (''C. nigra''), which are species of about the same size with very similar bone structures. The Middle Miocene beds of Maboko Island have yielded further remains. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「White stork」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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