Ogden Evening Standard | 1912-09-17 | Page 3 | Fewer Storks in Alsace

I FEWER STORKS IN ALSACE F9H ytom of Registration Is Being Trlod il to Learn About Migratory I Habits. I Every year the number or storks to be seen In Alsace becomes lese. Of the four nests perched on the big ; chimneys on tho old roofs of StrnBs-bnrg, StrnBs-bnrg, only one has been occupied thla year. In many of the villages tho Great migrators have ceased for a long tjmo to relieve the landscape, and It seems only a question of time when the stork in Alsace will be a memory. Varlouo are tho causes assigned for this desertion de-sertion the draining of the marshes, the multiplication of telephono and telegraph wlros and the sinoko from factory cblmnoys. In Germany for the better study of storks thcro baB been created a sort of service In connection with the Education Edu-cation Department which tends to set 4 up an "etat civil" for each bird, or, i9 l In other words, to register them after -vm the manner which obtains for citizens joj In France. JM ;' Each bird Is captured whore possl-jjj' possl-jjj' Dle and a motalllc disk affixed to Its 2S leg, and German officials, whorever $gnB the birds are believed to migrate, have IF? f nstruct'on5 to send to the department Hi I any Information they can gather con-I'llr con-I'llr cerolng storks who aro German subtil sub-til jects. (Possibly thlB labeling may S? .nave something to do with the scarc- ljj lty.) By this system of registration Jul tho authorities havo learned some- Hj" thing of the migratory habits of the K bird; for Instance, one was tound dead JH, at tho Cape ot Good Hope whose place 2? of origin was eastern Prussia. jjjW A point of Interest relative to tho jJS scarcity of the stork has been brought ljji under the notice of the German au- mSi thoritles by a doctor at Port EHza- jJ3j both, who suggests that they have YJjM been poisoned through eating grass- iWi hoppers or locusts which have been NTyj Wiled by arsenic. A correspondent, $ however, of an Alsace-Lorraine jour- 'Hj nal hints that the causo Is to be found Hf Bearer at home.