Hello everyone!
Do you remember last year's thread "White Storks in Germany (Main-Kinzig Area) 2014 (Update October 5th 2014)"? I had promised to keep you informed about the doings of "my" Storks. I'll do so now. About 8 Storks spent the entire winter around here. It was not very cold here, and we had snow for only 8 days in a row, so they did very well. Now many other Storks have returned, all the nests from last year are occupied by now, and most of the couples seem to have eggs already. And we have a new nest! A couple built it on top of a food-container for cows on a farm. The farmer seems to like it, because he had built some kind of nesting-aid with wooden boards. I have taken some pictures today , and I hope you like them.
I promise to keep you informed about the doings of the youngsters after they've hatched.
I hope you are all well. Take care!
Yours, Bente
EDIT: I completely forgot: What I absolutely wanted to tell you is that some of the Storks who stayed here were not youngsters who didn't know better.
One of them was a 14-years-old male, who comes here every year and who is known to migrate to Africa. This is the first time ever that he didn't leave. Isn't that interesting?
Hi, Bente. It's good to hear from you (and your Storks) again. I'm afraid I can't begin to imagine why the 14 year old has chosen to stay throughout winter, but I'm glad the winter was reasonably mild and he managed to survive it. I’m looking forward to hearing about the comings and goings of the Storks this year. Nice photos by the way.
Paul
Hello Bente,
It's nice that the storks have returned and doing well.
Hi Bente, It's great to hear about your storks. As in your case some of ours stayed the winter & some migrated & came back in the Spring. As far as we can tell by checking couples & ringed birds, all our storks that overwintered were adult birds, I think the youngsters generally migrate. Perhaps one of the other storks told the 14yr old one that it's ok to stay there in the winter!!
Hi Bente, great to hear the Storks are back and about the 14 year old one that wintered over; beautiful photos showing the landscape as well as the storks. look forward to the updates :)
Fabulous update B ... do you have access to this link?
www.beleefdelente.nl/.../ooievaar
A real bird's eye view!
Hello!
Thank you very much for looking in and for the kind comments.
I'm glad you like the Storks, too, and I'm looking forward to seeing the chicks. I'm glad that the Storks don't seem to mind all the people with their dogs. The entire area in the meadows is well-used for walking the dogs. But the Storks seem to get used to that very quickly.
Wendy, thank you very much for the link, but I'm sorry it doesn't work.
See you all soon. Yours, Bente
WendyBartter said:do you have access to this link?
Shame about that B, it was a direct link to Stork's nest ... Maybe if you just tried www.beleefdelente.nl it should get you to main page & all their different nests are listed at the bottom! It's in the Netherlands & naturally I have to ask google to translate!
Nice to hear from you again, Bente. Lovely to see your Storks already nesting. I suppose by not migrating the adult Stork can gain some sort advantage to start breeding earlier than if he had return all the way from Spain or Africa. Risky strategy though if the winter was very harsh.
Hello Wendy,
thank you very much for the hint. This worked perfectly well. And at the moment there is a Stork sitting on the nest. What a great view! Thank you very much!
Unknown said:I suppose by not migrating the adult Stork can gain some sort advantage to start breeding earlie
Hello TeeJay, it is good to be back. I didn't mean to be away at all, it just happened. Probably you are right with the advantage of breeding earlier, but in any case the Storks that stayed here had an advantage to secure the best nest-sites for themselves. They used them all winter long for roosting at night. Not always, but once in a while. I got the impression that they made some kind of short visits to different places in our area.
Regards, Bente