News

The stork nest at the Vlaha has been deserted for days, and it is now safe to say that all the members of the stork family nesting here have left. 

A group of storks migrating to Africa reached Vlaha on the evening of Friday 11 August. Unfortunately, the journey for one stork only lasted so long. 

Since Tuesday 25th of July, one of the storklings ceased to return to the nest. Miska and Leske continue to bring food to the nest a couple of times a day, but Monday evening, 24th of July, was the last time three young storks competed for the food brought by the elders. Then the next morning the young fledged, and only two have since joined in on the family meals. 

Two months after hatching, the storks of Vlaha took flight for the first time.  From the pictures of the time lapse, the bravest one left the nest at 10:20 on Sunday 9 July and returned an hour later to make sure he didn't miss the 11:38 feeding. The attempt was  successful, and was repeated several times the next day. On the third day, 11 July, at 19:00, two more chicks were missing from the nest. The one left alone looked on enviously at his companions. On Wednesday 12 July, just after 10am, the nest was completely empty for the first time. 

A stork that grew up and was ringed in a nest in the Vlaha nest last year was photographed in Bacău County. The stork, wearing the ring 7844, was captured by observer Constantin Chiriloaie on 21 June on the banks of the Bistrița River, about eight kilometres from the centre of Bacău city, near the village of Ruși-Ciutea. The stork was part of a group that also included two storks ringed in Hungary. The observer informed the Milvus Group, which forwarded the photo and information sent to the operators of the Clujbird.ro website. 
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On June 20, Tuesday, the stork chicks growing in the nest at Vlaha were ringed. Many children accompanied by their parents and grandparents gathered at the event. They were also given the opportunity to pet the stork chick brought down to be ringed under the nest. During the ringing, Leske and Miska kept an eye on the nest on the roof of neighboring houses.

After they reached the age of one month, in the last few days the parents left the stork chicks alone in the nest at Vlaha several times. On the evening of June 13, we saw the little ones for the first time without parental supervision. Then when we tried to check if this was the first occasion, we noticed that it had also happened earlier on the same day and the previous day. So far, the parents have only been away from the nest for periods of a few minutes.

One of the baby storks died in the nest in Vlaha on Friday 19 May. At its last feeding on Wednesday evening, everything seemed to be fine, but by early Friday morning it had stopped moving. Throughout the day, hay had been put on its head several times. Saturday morning at 6:15 Leske threw the carcass out of the nest. 
The last time we recorded a similar case was in 2017. 

The first two storks hatched in the nest of Vlaha on Tuesday morning, the 9th of May. This time the parents clutched for 36 days after the first egg was laid. Of course, the calendar is relative, as Leske laid the eggs shortly before midnight. If she had only laid them a couple of hours later, they would have been counted on a different day. Nor do we know exactly when during the night the eggshell was broken. In fact, at 6.16 a.m. the heads were already moving. So it is possible that the 34 days were only delayed by a few hours this time. 

A strange incident was observed on 30 April between 14:11 and 14:13 near the stork nest in Vlaha. Leske was clutching eggs when four storks circling high above approached the nest. Two of them descended, one of them even landed on the nest and, together with Leske, scared away the other descender by loud bill clattering. It was then confirmed that Miska was the stork that had landed on the nest. 

Leske and Miska are clutching five eggs in the nest of Vlaha, and it seems certain that the number of eggs will not increase. In the late evening of 3 April, Leske laid her first egg and, as we have seen in recent years, every other day after that Leske has laid another egg, always in the same 21:30 - 23:00 time slot. A sixth egg would have been laid on the evening of April 13th, but this did end up happening.  They were happy with five eggs. 

On Monday, 3 April at 23:06 Leske laid the first egg of the year.  The weather was not kind to the pair, and a few hours later it started to snow, covering the nest with several centimetres of snow. The storks did not protect the egg and it was covered in snow. As we have become accustomed to, the clutching only starts when there are 2-3 eggs in the nest. In recent years, the first egg has been followed by another egg in the nest every two days. In the next few days we will see if the winter weather will change the reproductive schedule of the stork family.

Dear Biology teachers!
Would you like to give your students an interesting and fun project? 
Three years ago, during the pandemic and online school, the Clujbird.ro team created its stork monitoring plan. The plan shows what exactly can be observed trough the live video broadcast from the stork nest in Vlaha.

We didn't have to wait long for this year's meeting. On Friday, 24th of March at sundown, the second stork has arrived on the nest in Vlaha. The odds are that the first stork was last year's Miska, and the second one was last year's Leske, but we can't know for certain. 

On Wednesday, 22 March at 19:29, the first stork of the year landed on the nest of Vlaha. He immediately announced his arrival with loud bill-clattering, and started to repair the nest. In the coming days we will try to identify whether if this is the same stork as last year's.

We hope that the stork pair, whose daily life we have been following live on this website since, is on its way home and will soon arrive to their nest at Vlaha. The same couple or a different one? We don't know for sure. We've been keeping records of the nest's storks since 2007, but we've only been able to closely observe them in the last six years, after the installation of the webcam above their nest, which we shared with the people through the World Wide Web.

It now seems certain that the storks have left the Vlaha nest after this year's successful breeding and
rearing. The last time we saw a stork in the nest was on the night of August 11, but it also disappeared in the early hours of the morning.
As usual, at the end of July and beginning of August, the events in the nest accelerated. Two days after the flight of the first youngling on July 17, on July 19, its siblings took their first flight as well.

One of the young storks left the Vlaha nest for the first time on the morning of Sunday, July 17. As can be seen from the time lapse images, the bravest chick was only absent from the nest for two minutes at 6:13, then a longer absence followed from 8:01 to 8:50. The adventurous little one also missed the 8:06 feeding. However, he did not want to miss the 8:50 feeding. At that time, he arrived at the nest at the same time as the parent bringing the food. During his absence, he watched for a while from the roof of the neighboring house, wondering how he would be able to fly back.

On Tuesday, June 21, we ringed the little storks rearing in the nest in Magyarfenes. About 25 children were accompanied by their parents and grandparents to the event. They also had the opportunity to pet one of the young storks brought down for ringing. All storks have a metal ring on their left leg, which helps in identification if the bird dies, and someone finds its remains. A white plastic cylinder on which a four-digit number was written in black was placed on the right leg. This number can also be read from a photograph, so it is also suitable for identifying the living stork.

Just one week in after the baby storks hatched, we can almost be certain that the last egg was not viable. This means only 4 of the hatchlings will get a chance to develop in the Vlaha nest. 
The number is considered average, the past few years there were also 4 young storks hatching in this nest, although only 2 times in the past 5 years the parents managed to raise all four of them.

During this week the two adult storks started to bring less and less food to the nest in Magyarfenes/Vlaha so the chicks were forced to take care of themselves. On Tuesday Leske and Miska’s catering service functioned well still. On the photos taken by the camera at 10:22, 13:36, 16:04, 17:32, 19:36 minutes and at 20:54 at night it is visible that the young storks are standing in a circle around an adult stork, that - we thought - brought food to them. From Wednesday these kind of scenes were dropping out and they took the shape for eating at 17:22, 18:42, 19:34 and at 20:06, 21:48.

On Tuesday, on the 21st of July the nest has become completely empty, which means that also the smallest stork, the 8310 one flew also from the nest. One of the followers of our website announced us on Monday, that he has seen the nest empty for a second but this takeoff must have been so short that the time lapse of our website  - that connects pictures taken every two minutes – has not imortalized it. The takeoff from Tuesday lasted longer: the little storks have left the nest one by one which meant that between 14:14 and 14:38 the nest completely emptied.

The first little stork has flewn out from the Magyarfenes/Vlaha nest on Wednesday, the 15th of July at night. As it is shown from the website’s time lapse one of the little storks left the nest at 18:34 and he returned a couple of minutes after 19o’clock. In the meantime he missed a meal, that was served by Leske for the rest of the little ones left in the nest. We thank a follower of the website that he drew our attention upon the news.

The little storks raised in the stork nest of Magyarfenes/Vlaha are spreading their wings. In the last two years the first flying happened on the 14th and 16th of July, three years ago we recorded the first leaving of the nest o the 27th of July. The nestlings have been training for the last week, they are alternately preparing for the flying. They are moing their wings rising to about a metre high and they drop back down. The parents repeatedly call them with loud clattering from the neighboring electricity pylons and rooftops. The little ones are almost the size of their parents.

On Monday morning within the framework of the ringing program of the Milvus Group – Bird and Nature Protection Association we ringed the stork chicks growing up in the nest in Magyarfenes/Vlaha. The storks received a small metallic tag mounted on the left leg, with the inscription “Romania” and an individual number. The bigger, white cylinder where there is a black number readable with a telescope was mounted on the right leg, on the thigh. The storks ringed in Magyarfenes/Vlaha received the numbers 8307, 8308, 8309 and 8310.