The Painted Stork needs no painting!!

The Painted Stork, Mycteria leucocephala, is a large wading bird in the stork family Ciconiidae of the order Ciconiiformes. Storks can be found on all continents except Antarctica and occur in most of the warmer regions of the world. They have a strong preference for tropical climates, and the only representative in North America is the wood stork (same genus as Painted Stork), which has a small and endangered population in southern Florida. There are nineteen different species of stork. Ciconiiformes like most families of aquatic birds storks seem to have arisen in the Paleocene, 40-50 million years ago. Though some storks are highly threatened, no species or subspecies are known to have gone extinct in historic times.

The Painted Stork is tall and slender, standing about 3 feet tall with a large heavy yellow beak and an orange/red head. It is white in color with black markings and delicate pink on the lower back and has pink legs. It breeds in Asia from India to southeast Asia. The Painted Stork (‘dokh’ in Hindi) is a broad winged soaring bird. Till 18 months of age, the young ones can make loud calls to attract their parents, after this, they lose their speech Storks have no syrinx (the vocal organ of a bird, consisting of thin vibrating muscles at or close to the division of the trachea into the bronchi).and are mute, giving no bird call; bill-clattering is an important mode of stork communication at the nest the storks communicate mainly by clattering their large bills or hissing, or by visual "displays" such as bowing to each other or spreading their large wings and use other signals to convey something to their fellow birds.

At a distance a flock of White Storks may be confused with Common Cranes, but cranes fly in neatly regimented V’s and lines, storks in rather more chaotic gaggles. Also the easiest way to distinguish storks from herons in flight is though both fly with their legs trailing, herons fly with their necks retracted, whereas storks fly mostly with their necks outstretched. Storks live in mainly lowland habitats and many species prefer wetlands but most Storks tend to live in drier habitats than the related herons, spoonbills, and ibises. Nests of painted storks look like cluttered dirty blobs of white on the tree tops. Both male and female look the same, though the female is slightly smaller in height.

Painted stork has a place in the list of protected species. The species is placed as ‘Near Threatened’ in the IUCN Red List Category 2008 (as evaluated by BirdLife International), because it is thought to be undergoing a moderately rapid population decline owing to hunting, habitat destruction, local trade and agricultural pollution. Among the species of stork the Oriental white stork, Storm's stork, and greater adjutant are considered to be endangered species; the lesser adjutant and milky stork are listed as Vulnerable, and the black-necked stork are listed as Near Threatened .

Storks have often been held in great affection by people. Many of the myths and symbolism is tied to the stork. In medieval European societies the details of human reproduction were difficult to approach, especially in reply to a child's query of "Where did I come from?"; "The stork brought you to us" was the tactic used to avoid discussion of sex. This habit was derived from the

once popular view that storks were the harbingers of happiness and prosperity. The Hebrew word for stork - "Hasida" was equivalent to "devotee" (namely a devout, God-fearing, religiously observant or righteous, pious and kind woman); it is in fact the female form of the word "Hasid" which became identified with the Hasidic movement of Judaism (started in 18th century East Europe, it was basically about focusing Rabbi as conduit to god). The very common surname in Czech "Čapek" means "littlestork". (all details taken from Net).

This poem titled The Stork by Eugene Field (1850-1895)-referred to as children’s poet.

Last night the Stork came stalking,
And, Stork, beneath your wing
Lay, lapped in dreamless slumber,
The tiniest little thing!
From Babyland, out yonder
Beside a silver sea,
You brought a priceless treasure

As gift to mine and me!

We all know there are many postures in Yoga that is taken from animals and birds, I came across one on Net that was referred to as Stork pose!!. It is done to increase balance and stability. The is from Vietnam. The painting in here is by an Indian artist Shaikh Zayn-Al-din (1770-1790), unfortunately not much detail about him is available on the Net.