Was not quite sure whether to post this here, or in the "Fortean Fauna" sub-forum: plumped for "Religions & Cults", because the issue about which I'm curious is basically a religion-related one.
When recently looking-up something which I dimly remembered, about the last-recorded instance (very recent reintroductions, aside) of white storks' breeding in the British Isles (in 1416 -- of all places, on the roof of St. Giles's Cathedral in Edinburgh): Google cast up a perplexing reference, in an item by an organisation calling itself the "Cameron Bespolka Trust -- connecting young people with nature". The piece in question tells of the white stork's being long extinct in Britain (last nesting in 1416, as above) due to hunting, and habitat loss (the bird's characteristic watery habitats having been ongoingly reduced in area, for centuries past); and -- the strange thing, following -- a contributing factor to its extinction having been "persecution (as a symbol of Christianity)".
My initial reaction was, "this has got to be rubbish". I have never seen any reference anywhere, to storks -- of any kind -- being a symbol of Christianity. Even if this type of bird had been seen as such by some people in some places: per my understanding, Christianity had been very firmly in the saddle in the British Isles for many centuries prior to the 15th. Stubborn adherents of other religions -- one would reckon from the context: older, pagan ones -- would in order to survive at all, have had to keep a very low profile. Even if for reasons of their own, they identified storks with Christianity and were thus hostile to the creatures: doing enough stork-persecuting to have any effect on the birds' numbers, would surely have directed the Church's attention to themselves, with disastrous consequences.
Would anyone know: is there some crumb of accuracy in any of the foregoing "storks a Christian symbol and thus -- 'way back when' -- persecuted in Britain to a significant extent, by hostile other-religion adherents" -- or am I right in my feeling that here anyway, the Cameron Bespolka Trust is "full of it"?
When recently looking-up something which I dimly remembered, about the last-recorded instance (very recent reintroductions, aside) of white storks' breeding in the British Isles (in 1416 -- of all places, on the roof of St. Giles's Cathedral in Edinburgh): Google cast up a perplexing reference, in an item by an organisation calling itself the "Cameron Bespolka Trust -- connecting young people with nature". The piece in question tells of the white stork's being long extinct in Britain (last nesting in 1416, as above) due to hunting, and habitat loss (the bird's characteristic watery habitats having been ongoingly reduced in area, for centuries past); and -- the strange thing, following -- a contributing factor to its extinction having been "persecution (as a symbol of Christianity)".
My initial reaction was, "this has got to be rubbish". I have never seen any reference anywhere, to storks -- of any kind -- being a symbol of Christianity. Even if this type of bird had been seen as such by some people in some places: per my understanding, Christianity had been very firmly in the saddle in the British Isles for many centuries prior to the 15th. Stubborn adherents of other religions -- one would reckon from the context: older, pagan ones -- would in order to survive at all, have had to keep a very low profile. Even if for reasons of their own, they identified storks with Christianity and were thus hostile to the creatures: doing enough stork-persecuting to have any effect on the birds' numbers, would surely have directed the Church's attention to themselves, with disastrous consequences.
Would anyone know: is there some crumb of accuracy in any of the foregoing "storks a Christian symbol and thus -- 'way back when' -- persecuted in Britain to a significant extent, by hostile other-religion adherents" -- or am I right in my feeling that here anyway, the Cameron Bespolka Trust is "full of it"?
