Why we’ve installed a stork nest at Knowle Park

Visitors to Knowle Park may have spotted something new above the park in the past few weeks.

Thanks to the excellent team at Cranleigh Men’s Shed, we now have a purpose-built stork nest installed high up in the park. It was carefully lifted into place using a cherry picker very kindly donated for the morning by King & Stevens.

It was one of those lovely community moments. Local volunteers making something by hand. A local business helping us get it safely into position. And the park gaining another small but hopeful feature for wildlife.

So, why a stork nest?

The short answer is that we are trying to make Knowle Park as welcoming as possible for wildlife. Not by forcing nature, or expecting instant results, but by creating opportunities.

The longer answer takes us to Knepp.

Many of us at Knowle Park Trust have been inspired by the work at Knepp Rewilding in West Sussex.

We visit regularly, and every time I go there, I come away with fresh ideas about what nature recovery can look like. Not as a tidy, controlled project, but as something more patient, more generous and more alive.

One of the most exciting stories at Knepp has been the return of the white stork.

White storks were once part of the British landscape. They appear in old records, place names and folklore, but they disappeared as a breeding bird in this country hundreds of years ago. The White Stork Project, based around Knepp and other sites in southern England, has been working to bring them back by establishing a wild breeding population.

It’s a remarkable project. In 2020, white storks bred successfully at Knepp, widely reported as the first successful wild breeding in Britain for more than 600 years. Since then, the project has continued to grow, with more birds breeding, dispersing and being seen across southern England.

One of the release sites for the White Stork Project was at Wintershall, just down the road from us near Bramley. That makes this story feel especially local.

And it’s not just history or distant hope. As recently as last week, a local birdwatcher recorded 11 white storks feeding in a farmer’s field less than a mile from Knowle Park. We also understand that five white storks are currently resident at Slyfield in Guildford.

That doesn’t mean we expect a stork to move into Knowle Park next week. Nature doesn’t work to our timetable, however impatient we might be.

But it does mean the idea isn’t completely far-fetched.

White storks are large, elegant birds, with long legs, broad wings and that unmistakable black and white plumage. Across Europe, they are strongly associated with luck, renewal and new life. They’re often seen nesting close to people, on roofs, chimneys, telegraph poles and specially built platforms.

They’re also useful symbols for nature recovery because they need the kind of healthy, connected landscape we should all want more of. They feed in damp grassland, wetlands, pastures and open fields, taking a wide range of food including earthworms, insects, amphibians, small mammals and other small prey.

In other words, they tell us something important. If a landscape can support birds like white storks, it is likely supporting plenty of other life too.

At Knowle Park, we already have a mix of habitats. We have the lake, wetland areas, the stream, grassland, scrub, woodland edges and surrounding farmland. We’ve been working hard to improve the park for wildlife, from ditch restoration and tree planting to protecting sensitive areas and encouraging life on, in and around the lake.

The stork nest is another piece of that wider picture.

Will it attract a white stork?

Maybe. Maybe not.

It might sit empty for a while. It might become a perch. It might be used by another bird altogether.

That would be fine too. Good habitat creation isn’t always about getting the headline species. Often, it’s about adding structure, shelter and possibility.

If a stork does ever choose to use it, that would be extraordinary. But even if it never happens, the nest still says something about what we want Knowle Park to become.

A place where nature has room.

A place where we try things.

A place where local people can feel connected to the bigger story of wildlife recovery happening across Surrey, Sussex and beyond.

Huge thanks again to Cranleigh Men’s Shed for creating the nest, to King & Stevens for donating the cherry picker, and to Steve and Sam for braving the heights to get it installed safely.

Now we wait, watch, and let nature decide.