The nest at Vlaha has been empty for days and it seems that our storks are on their way. We can see that this year they came earlier and left earlier than in previous years.
As we expected, the family members did not leave all at once. The first to leave the nest was one of the chicks on the 14th of July. It seemed odd to leave so early as the youngest stork had left the nest for the first time the day before, on the 13th of July. We suspected that one of the storks had been electrocuted. We put out a call on the village Facebook group asking anyone who saw a stork in the village to let us know. On the 1st of August, a resident of Magyarfenes found a dead stork in his cornfield under the medium-voltage power line, but there was no ring on it, so it was definitely not the carcass of a baby stork that had grown up in our nest. In the strong July sun, the storks had used their droppings to create a protective layer around their feet, which also obscured the number of rings. This made it impossible to tell which stork had disappeared first.
In the nearly two weeks that followed, four baby storks returned to the nest for feeding and night roosting. Leske and Miska continued to 'bring home' food for the chicks on a regular basis, apparently supplementing it as they flew out. The adult storks usually spent the night on one of the neighbouring lampposts or roofs during this period.
On the evening of the 26th of July, the last meal of the night, four chicks tried to pluck food from their parents' beaks, but on the 27th of July only two returned, having flown out at 5.30am. One left the next day and the other enjoyed the warmth of home for a few more days, spending the nights with Leske in the nest. On the 30th of July, at 6.17am, the last ringed stork was caught on camera, after which only the parents returned. They didn't stay long either. Leske left in the morning of the 31st. Miska guarded the nest until 7 August, when he also left. The departure is considered early, as there was one year (2020) when he stayed until the 23th of August, but the arrival, the first eggs laid, was also early. Leske and Miska had a successful year, raising five chicks.
This year's stork monitoring programme was also successful. Click here to see the best photos of the stork population in Magyarfenes this year.
The project team members were:
Árpád Gazda, journalist, neighbour of the nest, author of the photos and news,
Dr. Zoltán D. Szabó, biologist and technical leader of the observation,
Tímea Laslavic, translator, blogger, translator of the Romanian news,
Flóra Gazda, student, English news translator,
Lehel Lázár, website developer,
Zsolt Okos, broadcast and network expert,
all volunteers for the freshman monitoring programme.