looduskalender.ee

Conservatives. White storks have remained faithful to power poles.

 

In early May the Estonian Ornithological Society launched a new web application for mapping the nest sites of white storks:

 

Within the first month nearly 450 white stork friends have already entered more than 1100 white stork nests.

Many thanks to all participants in the census!

 

Up to early June mainly only data about the nests had been entered but when the chicks are raising their heads it will be a good time to add nesting information to the nest data.

 

Some recommendations to new users of the white stork web application:

 

The web application doesn’t work correctly with older Internet Explorer versions, that is, some cells it doesn’t show what should be entered there and the entry is mostly  left halfway done. Because of this please use a computer with a recent Internet Explorer version or use Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome whenever possible.

 

On entering the coordinates of a nest manually it has happened several times that the nest has ended up quite far from the correct location. On some occasions coordinates have been entered in a format unsuitable for the web application. The application does not recognize it and due to this the nest does not appear on the map. Guidelines for adding information about a  new nest are in the  info boxes on the corresponding page or found by way of the ”ABI” (Help) link. The easiest way to enter a new nest is by marking the nest location directly on the map. The coordinates and also the name of the county, parish and village will then automatically appear in the respective cells and the risk of making an error is reduced at once.

 

Please be as accurate as possible on entering the coordinates. It has become apparent that several nests have been marked in the wrong place on the map. The problem is not nests some tens of meters off. But many nests have for instance been entered at neighbouring farm or the nest is marked as being in the middle of the village. I have found nests in the map whose real locations are hundreds of meters away (the record is a couple of kilometres). Entry errors apparently often arise from the fact that the nest was not entered at once but some time later and then it is no longer recalled clearly exactly where this nest was. If you do not remember exactly then please don’t enter the nest and if necessary re-examine the nest location again. The web application map can be considerably enlarged and in the ”photo” version even the smallest details become visible. In many cases even the shadows of the power poles are visible and the nest can be entered on the map very accurately. Nest locations on the map cannot be changed. If anyone finds a nest that has got into the wrong location please let us know. I will delete the erroneous nest from the database and the nest must then be entered again.

 

Once more our sincere thanks to all participants in the census!

 

Margus Ots, EOÜ white stork project coordinator  Margus.ots@gmail.com