At the end of summer, when young storks become independent and prepare to migrate, drivers have to reckon with an additional risk on the road: collisions with these large birds. In August the insurance company ERGO registered a CASCO case in which a stork flew into a car, damaging the front bumper and the air conditioning system. Two similar collisions were reported at the end of July and in August at “Gjensidige”, a company in the ERGO group. Ornithologist Dmitrijs Boiko explains why white storks are more often found on roads, and why young birds are not always able to get out of the way of cars in time.

How expensive is a stork strike?

“Collisions with birds and the vehicle damage that goes with them are a fairly common occurrence in CASCO claims, but they usually involve small birds: larks, swallows, starlings and the like. The losses to vehicles in such cases are correspondingly smaller. At the end of summer, however, the risk of collisions with storks increases, and because of the size of these birds one has to expect that the impact on the car, and the extent of the damage, can be considerably greater,” says Sanita Rubene, Director of the ERGO Claims Handling Department.

In August ERGO received a CASCO claim after a stork unexpectedly flew into the front of a passenger car on a road in Madona municipality, damaging the bumper and puncturing the air conditioning pipe. On preliminary calculations, the CASCO payout to put the damage right in this case will be around 1,300 euros. Two similar collisions in the second half of the summer were reported to “Gjensidige”. In one of them a stork flew into the top of a truck tractor cab, damaging a light, the plastic trim and the upper corner of the cab. Here the repair of the vehicle will provisionally cost around 2,000 euros. The other incident happened when a stork flew in from the side towards a passenger car and struck the bonnet. The repair estimate for the car after that collision comes to 600 euros.

“These situations are usually hard for a driver to foresee, because a bird can appear on or near the carriageway suddenly. That is why, when driving on rural roads, and especially in places where storks or other birds and their nesting sites can be seen, it is important to keep to a safe speed and to be ready for the birds to move,” S. Rubene stresses.

The new generation of storks: a greater risk for drivers

The presence of storks on or near the carriageway at the end of summer is no accident. Ornithologist Dmitrijs Boiko, head of the Zoology Department of the Latvian National Museum of Natural History, explains that by the beginning of August the young white storks hatched this year have already learned to fly, but are still only learning to find food on their own and to avoid dangers.

“They do not yet know what a human is and what a car is, and young birds have no experience in judging correctly which direction it is safer to take off from the road in. Roadsides, meanwhile, offer easily available food: insects, amphibians and other things to eat can be found in the grass. This is especially noticeable in places surrounded by wide fields of monocultures,” says D. Boiko.

The expert notes that white storks usually leave Latvia in the second half of August, around 20 August, so this is the time when young birds move especially actively between feeding sites. Storks are also unable to rise steeply and vertically from a standstill: they need a run-up, so on seeing a car a bird cannot always reach safety quickly enough.

A bird’s fight with its reflection

The damage storks cause to cars is not always connected with collisions on the road. Last year the largest CASCO payout ERGO made for damage caused by a stork reached 3,520 euros: the owner of the vehicle woke in the morning to a strange noise and found a stork damaging the bodywork of his car with its beak.

The car was shiny, and the bird most likely saw its own reflection in it, taking it for another stork and a possible competitor in its territory. There was also a stork nest about 100 metres from the car. The bird’s many blows with its beak left dents and scratches on the car and damaged the paintwork, so respraying had to be carried out. This case shows that living safely alongside our winged neighbours calls for attention and caution even when the car is parked.