In Arabic world popular is the conviction that storks incarnate the souls of dead Muslims, who did not managed to fulfill their duty of pilgrimage to Mekka. Thus they take this journey in the body of a bird. This is why Muslims feel great respect towards storks, and killing them is equal to killing a man.

However, this tradition of showing respect to storks leads to the story of anti-stork actions. When Greece was occupied by the Turkish Empire, the Turks introduced  the law, which  ordered to protect stork nests. Thus, unintentionally they made a stork  a symbol of the occupant. When the uprising broke out in 1821, victorious Greeks in the acts of revenge got rid of stork nests. Not a single nest remained in Athens, Patras and Seres.

The stork also appeared to be an anti-symbol in Ukraine. When the Bolshevic activists started to "modernize" the countryside, they destroyed stork nest, which they found a symbol of poverty and backwardness.

Storks had more luck in Moldavia, where thanks to a local legend they became a symbol of vine growers and wine producers. According to the legend, a stork saved the besieged fortress from defeat, when it brought the grapevines for the defenders. Once they ate the grapes they managed to ward off the enemy.

Inhabitants of different parts of Europe used to find stork a bird which brings luck, prosperity, bumper crop. For example, the Dutch name of the stork – ooievaar – comes from old German odobero – bringing luck (ode – luck, baren – bring).

It is also believed that stork’s nest placed on the roof protects the building from a clap of thunder. This superstition, however, was not confirmed by the facts – about 3 percent of stork nestlings are killed by a thunder.

The most famous naturalist of the ancient Greece, Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was convinced that storks, that disappear somewhere in autumn, hibernate throughout winter. Later, it was also believed that smaller bird species travel to Africa on the back of the migrating storks.