A few thousand years ago, when the great part of Europe was covered with dense forest, there were few storks here. They inhabited muddy surroundings of lakes, meadows and marshes in the valleys of big rivers. Once trees started to grow on these areas, birds moved on to look for a different meadow or river valley.

The situation changed when agriculture developed in Europe, forests were cut down and pastures and cultivation areas expanded significantly. In ancient Greece and Rome storks inhabited agricultural areas and built nests on top of buildings. In Western Europe great forests disappeared in early Middle Ages. In Poland the process took place between 12th and 16th century (at first in Silesia and Greater Poland, then in the north-east parts of the country). While the areas of meadows and pastures were getting larger and larger, more and more storks started coming to breed in Poland.

However, the times of prosperity for storks came to an end when human intervention in natural environment was no longer favourable for these birds. Draining meadows, river control, standardization and impoverishment of landscape linked with progressive industrialization deprived storks of attractive habitat areas.

The last stork nest in Great Britain was deserted in 1416. In that time the settlement started in Eastern Poland and Latvia. Storks moved eastward. This process continued for centuries. In 19th and 20th centuries storks began to leave western Europe. Within last 100 years storks have almost disappeared from northern France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, western and southern Germany. During some seasons there was not a single stork in Sweden and Switzerland.

Nowadays, there are fewer than 10 breeding pairs in Holland (in 1958 there were 56 pairs, and in 1910 – 500 pairs), in Denmark there are 9 pairs(in 1890 there were 4 thousand pairs). Within last decades storks started to build their nests north-east from Sankt Petersburgh and in the vicinity of Moscow and Voronezh.