Legends like these spurred Jasper Doest, a Dutch wildlife photographer, to turn his lens on the white stork. “It is so gentle,” he said. “The way it is building the nest, the way it is preening.

The shoebill may look like some kind of prehistoric muppet, but it's one of the fiercest birds in the animal kingdom. With a dense beak that clocks in at seven inches long and sometimes just as wide, ...