black sea red data book - Department of Biology

Ciconia nigra Linnaeus, 1758
Synonyms: Ciconia niger Linnaeus, 1758; Ciconia fiisca Brehm, 1831; Ciconia nigra
vera Brehm, 1866; Ardea nigra Linnaeus, 1758; Ardea atra Gmelin, 1789; Ardea
chrysopelargus Lichtenstein, 1793; Melanopelargus niger Linnaeus, 1758
Common names: Engl: Black stork, Bulg: Cheren scherkel; Rom: Cocostirc negru;
Russ: Chorny aist; Turk: Siyah leylek; Ukr: Leleka chorny
Order CICONJJFORMES
Family CICONITDAE
Taxonomic description. Black bird with white belly, red legs and a red beak. As big
as the white stork (Ciconia ciconia). The black colour of young individuals is later
replaced with dark brown.
R7CN Status
World level: NE
Black Sea Regional level: NE
Subregion level: NE
Distribution. Along the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, the Black stork used to nest in
Dobrudja, near the town of Balchik (Simpson, 1861), in the Provadiiska valley (Elwes
& Buckley, 1870), in East Stara Planina and the mountain Strandja, especially along
water-courses running into the rivers Batova, Kamchia, Ropotamo, Djavolska,
Kitenska and Veleka. In the last century one pair was nesting in the Romanian part of
Dobrudja, near Babadat, on a rock near the edge of a wood (Elwes & Buckley, 1870).
There are no nesting areas along the Black sea-coast of Ukraine and Russia and along
the seashore of the Sea of Azov. According to Kostin(1983), the Black stork was
breeding in the mountains of the Crimea peninsula in the nineteenth and at the
beginning of the twentieth century. The last nest was found there in 1919 and later
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