Spring, peace and babies: De ooievaar (the stork) in Dutch culture

The "ooievaar" plays an important role in the lives of the Dutch. Ruud Hisgen from Direct Dutch tells you more about this stately migratory bird which has found its home in Dutch culture and language.

On my way from home in Voorburg to work in The Hague, the tram runs past the beautiful windmill De Vlieger from 1621. Next to this stately building with its four sails is a large stick nest, where a stork lays her clutch of eggs. Each time I catch a glimpse of the proud couple standing on their large nest, this sight fills my chest with joy and I know it will be another happy day.

Where does the word ooievaar come from?

The scientific name of the species was published in 1758 as Ardea ciconia by the Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus. The English "stork" and the German "Storch" both originate in an old word for "stiff", which refers to the long, red, stiff legs.

This type of name was also used by farmers in these marshy Netherlands, but from around the 1200s, the Dutch preferred to call the bird ooievaar. This comes from the Germanic auda-bara, meaning "treasure bearer", which hints at some of the legends about this majestic bird. 

Boerenkool (curly kale) and bekken (bills)

According to a fable, Dutch babies grow inside boerenkool (curly kale), the largest cabbage of them all. In some of these legends, the ooievaars then carry human babies in their bills to their mothers. These kinds of stories are probably the result of taboos that made discussing private and sexual matters in public undignified - everyone can talk of cabbage and birds without embarrassment.

While the boerenkool story has faded away, that of the ooievaar hasn't. If you live in the Netherlands, you will surely have seen the huge models of storks standing in Dutch gardens or stuck to windows, as though they are about to fly straight through. These are to announce a new baby in the house, and the accompanying sign usually says something like: Hoera, een dochter! (Hooray, a daughter!) or Hoera, een zoon! (Hooray, a son!).

The commonplace use of the ooievaar in this way shows how deeply the legend of baby-bringing stork has settled into Dutch culture. The expression ze verwachten de ooievaar (they’re expecting the stork) means: a baby is on the way. A true treasure-bearer indeed!

A proud bird on The Hague’s coat of arms

Many Dutch provinces or cities have or had a mascot in their coat of arms. Holland and Zeeland, for example, are proud of their dappere leeuw (courageous lion). The former municipality of Zijpe in North Holland had een zwaan (a swan). And ever since 1811, the coat of arms of the city of The Hague has included a stork with a wriggling black eel.

The Dutch associate the stork with love and peace. In 2012, the motto Vrede en Recht (Peace and Justice) was added to the coat of arms, referring to the city as the home of international justice. However, the stork has had a much longer historical association with the Hofstad (court city) of the Netherlands.

The earliest image of a stork can be found on the Jhesus bell from 1541. It hangs in the Grote Kerk, also known as Sint-Jacobskerk, in the centre of The Hague. Until the beginning of the 20th, there was een riviervismarkt (a river-fish market) next to the medieval church, and storks were welcomed helpers, because they kept the streets clean of fish offal. This may explain the wriggling black eel in its beak.

Ooievaars zijn migranten (storks are migrants)

The white stork is a long-distance migrant. It winters in Africa, and is a clever navigator. When migrating between Europe and Africa, it has to detour over the Levant in the east or the Strait of Gibraltar in the west, because the air thermals on which it depends for soaring do not form over the Mediterranean Sea. But it still makes it home to the Netherlands every year.

Because the storks return in spring, the Dutch look forward to their arrival every year, seeing it a sign that the weather is improving and the countryside is waking up again.

Ooievaars are carnivores and eat almost anything small: kikkers (frogs), vis (fish), kleine zoogdiertjes (small mammals) and vogeltjes (small birds), so they are also important in keeping the small animal population under control.

Adult storks like to perform a noisy bill-clattering, which sounds like distant machine gun fire. The Dutch call this sound klepperen.

De reiger is geen ooievaar (the heron is not a stork)

Don’t mistake de reiger for a stork. De reiger (the heron) also has two stiff long legs, but is much smaller, greyer and far more common. This grey bird is usually found on the bank of a ditch, staring into the water, hoping to catch a frog or a little fish. The heron is not as popular as the stork is in the Netherlands - perhaps because it is here all year round, or perhaps because de reiger has the habit of going to the toilet on newly washed cars! 

Do you want to know more about Dutch nature, birds and culture, and would you like to talk or read about it in Dutch? The courses at Direct Dutch will help you to achieve your language goals.