Hello!
For all of you, who would like to hear some more about the Storks in my home-area, there is something I would like to share. On Saturday there was a large article in the newspaper. It was the usual report about the Storks that have already returned and about the nestingsites in the region.
First of all, for you to take your bearings, I have a rather bad photo of a map. The scale is 1:25.000, and it shows the ca. 10 kilometres between the suburb of the town, where I live, and another town more to the west. I have tried to mark the areas, where the nests are, with colourful post-it-pieces and black crosses on them. The orange one on the right side of the map is right here at my hometown and stands for 4 nests. Three of them I can see from the train on my way to work, and two of them are already occupied. On the left side there are a blue and a green spot. The blue one is a nest on a Church, the green also stands for three nests. And today I have seen, that a couple is trying to make themself at home on a dead tree, where they make an attempt of building a nest without any aid by humans (normally there are posts put up with a platform on top, on that the Storks build their nest). Surprisingly, this dead tree is not more than 30 metres away from the railroad-tracks. The two Storks stood up there and were completely calm and relaxed, as the train passed by.
And now lets start with my report about the newspaper-article:
In the whole area, that is even larger than the part shown on the map, there are now 32 nests. 27 are already occupied by couples, and the other three by single birds. All these storks are experienced birds, that already had chicks in the past. Some of the couples have not returned to their previous nests, but have moved to other nests. That is not definite, as latecomers might still be able to chase them away. The article also says that it is more important to a stork to keep his usual nest than his usual partner. Isn't that interesting? The oldest Stork, that has returned, is a 17-year-old male, who nests in the area, that I have marked with green. He has returned with a young female, and it is supposed that his former partner must have died. The male from a nest more to the east from us, has last year had a deadly accident with a train. This year a new male has come, and replaced him.He has a ring with the number DEW 9 X 956, that means that he is hatched in 2011 at Neuenhaßlau (you can see it right in the middle of the map, it is not far from here). In the article is also something about a "Chaos-Couple". If everything in the article is true, they have kidnapped a chick from another nest last year. And now, they have occupied another nest than last year, but they also defend their old nest. So there are heavy fights to be expected.
The experienced couples are quite relaxed with humans and dogs, but newcomers can easily be disturbed, and might give up their nest and chicks then, so all the people are asked not to approach the nests and not to preoccupie the Storks.
This is all for now. If there is more in the newspaper, or if I can take some pictures, I'll try to post soemthing here.
Kind regards from Germany,
Bente
"The Sign of the Four" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"The Sign of the Stork" by Bente W.
My first good deed for the day was the rescue of this snail. I put it in a shady place, as we had about 30°C.
Nest No 1: Our last visit was only 4 days ago, but dear me have the chicks grown!
Very well-behaved: Two by two, like at school
Not Dad, but a neighbour passing
Now you can see how much they have grown. The wings are considerably longer than last time.
And the chick makes progress: There is already air between the feet and the nest!
A visit to another nest: What looks like one huge pile of storks, are 4 chicks plus Mum, too.
A local farmer was making hay, so another stork came in search for mice and other food. But why on earth did he keep flapping his wings?
The next good deed for today was the rescue of this caterpillar (sorry, this time I don't have the faintest idea, although I've looked very carefully in my Dad's book) EDIT: Saturday, June 07th: I've just seen that my Dad has another book about caterpillars, and there I've found it: It seems to be the semi-mature (?) caterpillar of the Small Emperor Moth (or just Emperor Moth)
Nest No 3: Three chicks at least, but we are not absolutely sure. They never got up, so we think that they are considerably younger than their cousins in the other nests.
Three storks came after the machine of a farmer, who made hay. A few impressions of one of them:
Take-off:
Landing:
The storks were not at all disturbed by the machine
It can't take long now befor the chicks will fly for the first time. I hope I can see it!
I keep you informed.
Yours, Bente
Lovely photo's Bente. Nice to see the storks growing up.
J
Lovely set of photos Bente, we've got to do another trip round to do a count before they fly. They seem to be a bit earlier this year, although we saw 2 late nests a day or so ago, where the chicks were only 10/20 days. They usually fly towards the end of June at around 60 days.
Good luck with getting the first flights!
Best wishes
Hazel in Southwest France
Another lovely set of photos Bente. When they leave the nest do you know if they'll come back to roost there for a while?
Paul
My bird photos HERE
A great set of pictures, Bente. They are growing up so fast that it can't be too long before they fledge. I hope you will be there when they go.
____________________________________________________________________
Tony
My Flickr Photostream
Paul A said:When they leave the nest do you know if they'll come back to roost there for a while?
Hello Paul,
unfortunately I don't know exactly. What I know is that they stay very close until the leave for Africa in September. Last year was not a good year for Baby-Storks, but I could sometimes see up to 8 Storks together in the meadows looking for mice and frogs. But on the nest there was never more than one Stork, at least during daytime, so I suppose they roost in different places. I've never been there when it got dark, so I'm not sure. But maybe Hazel / Noisette knows better?
Hi Bente,
They often roost in trees at night or go back to their birth plateforme, but I expect once they are all quite big there won't be enough room on the nest. We have some nests in trees where the adults perch next to the nest except when feeding. Sometimes they all go off to other areas after fledging. There probably isn't any rule for what they do.
We had a tragedy yesterday when we went to check some nests after storms & a mini-tornado. I found the 5 chicks (around 40 days old) dead at the foot of the tree. I'm still too upset, but will post about it later.
Hello Hazel,
thank you so very much for this information, especially after having such a very sad experience! I'm at work now, but I had to log in to tell you how very, very sorry I am, and how much I feel for you. My, all 5 chicks at once? This is a mighty blow!
Really, I'm so sorry!
Thanks Bente, I still get upset even thinking about it. It is possible that because there were 5 of them the parents were perched on the tree (no room on the nest) & they panicked & stood up & just got blown off, the bodies were all within a few metres of each other.
The wind was very strong & there were lots of houses damaged & windows blown in. I read on our local website that several other Storks nests with young were lost on the same night in another area.
Hello and good evening!
After Hazel's bad news about her Storks, I hope to have something to cheer us all up a bit. In today's paper was a nice and long article which I would like to tell you about. It was once again a little report about how the Storks in our area are doing. First of all: In my direct neighbourhood there are 5 nests. One is the nest of the railway-storks, which are now incubating. The other four nests are each inhabited by four young storks. In a town about 10 kilometres away there is the tower on that is the nest inhabited by the so-called "Chaos-Couple" Arthur and Konstanze. This year they didn't cause any distress but managed to raise three babies which were ringed on June 2nd. Each of the babies has a human Godfather or Godmother, who was allowed to choose the name for it. They've got the ring-numbers DEW 2T907 , DEW 2T908 and DEW 2T909 and were named Brandon, Balthasar and Bibo.
In the article they have written that most of the Stork-couples are already established for some years, with two exceptions: Last year the couple on my favourite nest didn't have any babies, and this year the male and another female have been raising four young ones. This new female has already some experience with parental duties. She was part of the couple who was last year chased away from its nest by the "Chaos-Couple".
The Railway-Storks are new here. They are both unringed and had made the attempt to set up their home on one of the Stork-poles in the meadows. But the already established couple on the next pole didn't like the new neighbours and bullied them until they gave up. So they had to find themselves a new home.
At the end of the article the Hessian Association for Ornithology and Conservation of Nature (HGON), of course asked for donations. One plan what is to be done with the money is to work on one of our nests. It is already 1,30 metres high and has to be made smaller, as it is too heavy for the pole. And something has to be done with the pole as well, as it was already struck by lightning several times and has suffered damages.
As to the Stork-Babies, they are, according to the article, between 5 and 6 weeks old. I've paid a very short visit today, and they are still doing wing-exersizes. So far they seem to be fine.
At the end I would like to post a picture. It might not be very good, as I've taken the photo from the picture in the newspaper.I don't know about copy-right-regulations, but I hope that this once no-one can have objections. The photo was from today's issue of our local free newspaper, "Mittelhessenbote". I think it is very cute and hope you like it, too. It was taken during the ringing.
Thank you for your patience and your interest!
Kind regards, Bente
EDIT: I nearly forgot! My Dad told me he had noticed that a few days go the usually red legs of a Stork-Mother were white. He said that as a protection from the sun they make them white with their own p**p. It sounds very sensible, but can we really believe that ;-)