As of: February 5, 2024, 4:06 p.m
By: Kathrin Hauser
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The St. Johann eyrie in 2022. A pair of storks settled there for the first time.
It was discovered that one of the two storks was ringed in Poland.
This year he returned to the tower to breed again, but the nest collapsed.
© Gronau/Archive
When the stork's nest was blown off the church tower of St. Johann during a storm in the summer and the young storks were killed, there was a great outcry beyond Peißenberg.
A nesting aid for storks was required.
Recently there was a meeting about it.
Peißenberg – The stork obviously likes the place on the church tower of St. Johann.
At least he built a nest up there in both 2022 and 2023.
“The stork chose this place himself,” says the Peißenberg pastor Georg Fetsch.
In both years there was no happy ending for the storks and their offspring.
In 2022, the stork built a nest there, but there were no offspring.
At some point the animal flew away again and the following winter the nest fell from the roof, says Fetsch.
The stork came back to Peißenberg
In 2023 a stork tried his luck again.
It was found that it was the same stork on the Peißenberg church tower roof in both years.
He had been ringed in Poland and could therefore be identified.
Pastor Georg Fetsch (left) and Robert Pfeifer have spent the past few months extensively considering the question of whether a nesting aid can be installed on the tower roof of St. Johann.
© Ralf Ruder
Last year things ended worse: the stork built another nest on the roof of the church tower and at first everything looked like a successful breeding.
The stork found a female and soon the stork pair was breeding.
The offspring hatched around a month later.
The three young storks developed splendidly and were almost ready to leave the nest.
Then a violent storm came and blew the eyrie off the church tower roof (we reported).
The morning after the storm, Pastor Fetsch discovered the fallen nest with the young storks.
“Unfortunately they were dead,” Fetsch remembers.
Both parents survived.
There was great sympathy for the fate of the young storks in Peißenberg and also on social media.
Calls for a nesting aid for storks on the church roof of St. Johann quickly became loud.
This, according to the idea, could prevent the eyrie from being blown off the tower roof again.
Great sympathy for the fate of the storks
The event also concerned those responsible in the Peißenberg-Forst Catholic parish community.
“We thought about what we could do to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again,” says Fetsch.
When the empty nest was blown off the roof in 2022, the church foundation turned to the LBV's stork representative, Wolfgang Bechtel, and presented him with the idea of the nesting aid.
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As previously reported, Bechtel advised against this at the time.
In his opinion, the church tower is too high for a nesting aid to make sense up there.
It's not just about having the structure placed on the roof and secured, but also about looking after the nest that a stork might build there.
Otherwise there is a risk that the nest will become too heavy and unstable.
After the accident with the dead young storks occurred last year and interested citizens brought the request for a nesting aid to the representatives of the church administration, the parish had more detailed investigations carried out and obtained information as to whether such a construction could be possible could be built on the church roof.
“The first thing that had to be checked was the statics,” says Fetsch.
Only if the church tower roof is structurally suitable for this could a nesting aid be placed there.
The investigation itself was difficult.
This was only possible from the end of October because a colony of the strictly protected bat species “Greater Mouse-eared” lives inside the church tower under the roof.
The bats fly out in the fall and return in March.
The church tower could only be entered from October 30th.
Stork nest can weigh 1.5 tons
A weight of 1.5 tons was assumed for the stork's nest without the nesting aid.
Because of the bats, the construction of a nesting aid for storks should result in as little change as possible in the area where the “great mouse-eared bats” breed inside the church tower.
Despite these requirements, the structural engineer came to the conclusion that it would in principle be possible to install a nesting aid for storks.
The parish has already received an offer from a company that would build the nesting aid for around 10,000 euros and mount it on the tower roof.
This would require a mobile crane because the church tower is higher than the fire department's turntable ladder.
This would cost around 5200 euros.
Furthermore, costs of 5,000 euros would have to be expected for the care and inspection of the nest for the next five years.
With a few other, smaller items, it would cost around 21,000 euros to build, assemble and maintain the nesting aid for the next five years.
However, it is unclear whether the stork would actually use the nesting aid.
As church caretaker Robert Pfeifer reports, the parish has covered the costs, which have so far amounted to around 1,600 euros.
And she would also make the church tower available for the construction of a nesting aid, but she cannot bear the costs of construction and maintenance, as Fetsch and Pfeifer have now announced.
“The church administration cannot cover the costs,” says Pfeifer.
In order to communicate this to interested citizens, the parish recently invited people to a meeting.
Those responsible at the parish also showed a way in which the nesting aid could still be built if the costs of construction and assembly were borne by an interested group.
Pfeifer and Fetsch cannot say what the decision will be.
However, it is clear that time is of the essence, because the bats will return at the end of March.
And by then the nesting aid should already be mounted on the tower roof.