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We've followed Miss Middle's travels south, but even before she left, the offspring of Saaremaa Island's black storks Piia and Priit had already started on their first fall migration.

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- locations of Piia

- locations of her Son

  
During the time when Priit had managed to get hay bale twine wrapped around his head and had to wait a couple of days for rescue, Piia went traveling and the chicks in the nest went without eating. Fortunately, the storklets were ready to begin their own journeys and perhaps the unexpected dieting was even useful to them (they were very well fed at the time of banding). So began the journey of at least one of the three chicks (the storklet with the backpack)—he was off to the mainland and then further South on August 8th (two days after his mother Piia). In nine days Priit's son made it to central Lithuania where he found a good place to stop and to begin adjusting to his life alone.

The landscape at the stopping point of Rokiškis village seen from the road

Piia's son spent two weeks there. Most of the time he was on the drained muddy bottom of a man-made lake about 25 kilometers north of the city of Kaunas.

Views of the former lake.

He found enough food in the shallow puddles, but he didn't leave the nearby rivers uninspected.

Lithuanian Eagle Club members Deivis Dementavicius and Saulius Rumbutis visited the spot on September 4th to check things out. Unfortunately, they didn't see juvenile stork with the transmitter or any other black storks—the weather was good and Piia's son probably had already flown onward, though transmitter data showed that he was still there on the morning of September 2nd.