Summary of the 2009 Nesting Season

Cameras Watching over Black Storks nest
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Jo UK
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Summary of the 2009 Nesting Season

Post by Jo UK »

Webcamera, watching over Black Stork nest at Jõgevamaa, started on March 31 2009, with great expectations.

Kotkaklubi members had done some repairing works at the nest, to make it more secure and stable also the nearby pond`s banks were cleaned from bush, to give the storks better access to food.
mms://video.eenet.ee/2009/2009-03-26-kurepesa.wmv

So, everything was ready …. and on April 5th, at 13.46 cam time , Lili, from the forum, noticed first the arrival of a Black Stork !
mms://video.eenet.ee/2009/k2009-04-05.asf

As the bird had no rings, we thought it was Donna! But…the stork only lifted some twigs in the nest, looked around and at 13.52 left. This behaviour was so different from what we knew from previous seasons that it propounded a question- who is this Black Stork?!
The nest remained empty for night.

Urmas was quite sure that it was a stranger stork, not Donna nor Padis.

On April, 9th the same stork returned. He kept coming and going and did something very unusual – he marked the nest! Same happened once to Padis and Donna did the same, when she visited the nest last time, after Little, Mid and Big had left.

The forum members and also Urmas did a great job, comparing the appearances of Donna, Padis and the stranger, in many different pictures – the conclusion was that this year`s stranger is most possibly the intruder stork from previous season! A big, healthy and beautiful male BS.

From April 11 to April 16, the stranger stork visited the nest every day, but never stayed overnight.
On April,12 the forum members named the Black Stork – Toomas (in memory of Tooni).

And then came the Big Day – on April, 17th at 11.35 – the master of the house arrived….Padis was here! Oh, what joy it was to watch him… straight after landing on the nest he started cleaning and draining the nest bottom, bringing moss and branches!
Padis worked all day like a busy bee and at last he layed down and fell asleep.
http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/3561

All the following days up to the last day of April he continued building the nest, he found some cloth and pieces of plastic bags and brought them to the nest too, so it looked pretty awful at last.
But who had not arrived, was Donna!

Walpurgis Night (April, 30 ) was the first night when Padis did not sleep in the nest, looked like he had lost hope to find a partner.
May, 1st empty nest
May, 2nd Padis visits the nest briefly in the morning, about 10 minutes
May, 3rd Padis visits the nest in the morning
May, 4th Padis came to the nest and stayed overnight
May, 5th Padis left the nest at 6.01am, didn`t return
May,7th Padis visits the nest11.48 – 12.18
May, 8th Stork calls near the nest
May, 9th 7.47am Padis arrived , stayed at nest for a while
May, 10th Padis arrives at 7.11am but leaves soon. Later Toomas visited the nest for several times. Nobody at the nest at night.
May,11th Padis came with moss, left soon
May, 12th Padis spends 10 minutes in the nest
May, 13th Padis arrived at 15.00 , he rested for some time, made some arrangements in the nest, preened and at 16.41 camera time, he left.
This was the last time we saw Padis this summer

After that, our visiting stork Toomas came to the nest twice – on May 15th and May 17th

Since then the Black Stork nest stayed empty.
There were visitors, a buzzard and some small birds, but Black Storks did not return.
http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/4637
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asteria
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Post by asteria »

So more details beyond the nest: in July Toomas was trapped, ringed and tagged. Padis escaped the trap.
Update: later in turned out the trapped stork Toomas the second was not Toomas-the-Intruder visited the nest and never appeared here.
Whoever saves one life saves the world entire
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