Magnetic Storks

If gaping peasants in northern France, Germany or Poland last week thought they saw six white storks with wings dyed pink and green, aluminum bands on their legs and magnets strapped to their heads, the peasants had not lost their minds. The storks were indeed so equipped. They were subjects of a scientific experiment, prepared by Professor Kazimierz Wodzicki and two other Polish naturalists at Warsaw's College of Agriculture.

European storks migrate to Africa for the winter and many come back year after year to the same nests in northern Europe. How they or any other migratory birds find their way across untracked stretches of land and water, naturalists do not know. One guess is that they are sensitive to the earth's magnetic field, use it for guidance as an airplane pilot uses a radio beam.

Last year Professor Wodzicki shipped two storks from their summer nests near Butyny, Poland, to Berlin, where they were loosed with magnets strapped to their heads. Idea was that the interference from this headgear would prevent the birds from taking their bearings by terrestrial magnetism. They got back to Butyny all right, despite the magnets. That was not deemed conclusive enough to rule out all possibility of magnetic guidance, however, so the professor sent six more Polish storks to London this spring, and they too wore magnetic hats when set free.

Honorary Secretary C. I. Blackburne of Surrey's Haslemere Educational Museum, who managed the British end of the experiment, had no idea last week how soon, if at all, the storks would get back to Poland. "If they find a nice farm," he said, "with a frog pond they might decide to stay quite a while."

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