Endangered
Storm's Stork
Ciconia stormi
Storm's stork is a medium-sized stork species that occurs primarily in lowland tropical forests of Malaysia, Indonesia and southern Thailand.
Appearance
This medium-sized stork stands at 75–91 cm tall and most of the plumage is black. The undertail coverts and the back of neck are white with a black cap. It has orange facial skin with a yellow ring surrounding the eye, a red iris, and a pinkish-red bill.
Range and habitat
The bulk of the world population of this stork occurs on Borneo. Occurring in Kalimantan (Indonesia), Swarak, Sabah (Malaysia) and Brunei. It is also found throughout Sumatra, although its range there was previously considered to be restricted to the south east. Despite being widespread on both of these islands, the population occurs at low densities and only one or a few individuals have ever been sighted together, with the largest number being 12 during an observation in Brunei.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Storm's stork feeds primarily on small fish, frogs, aquatic insect larvae, and sometimes earthworms. The parents regurgitate the food into the bottom of the nest, whereupon it is picked up and swallowed by the chicks.
During a series of nest observations in southern Sumatra in 1989, adults were found to return to the nest with food for the chicks every 2–4 hours in June. But in July, food was brought to the nest less often and significantly more frequently in the late afternoons. In Sabah, they have also been reported to feed on grasshoppers and possibly crabs.
In crisis
It is considered to be the rarest of all storks, and is estimated to number at most 1,750 wild individuals across its geographic range. The population has long been in decline and the primary cause is widely considered to be deforestation of its native habitat. The primary threat to this species is degradation of its lowland forest habitat through deforestation for logging and conversion to oil palm plantations.
Because this stork is a lowland specialist, high-elevation forest remaining intact after destruction and fragmentation of lowland habitat is unsuitable, so that transmigration to higher altitude forests is unlikely to be a viable escape solution. A secondary threat to this species is hunting by humans.
Storm's Stork is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Storm's Stork, Wikidata item Q535436. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
