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On Sunday, April 5th, a black stork visited our camera-equipped nest. Viewers were of course thrilled, and the stork made herself so much at home we thought that Donna had returned.

 

A quick facial analysis confirmed the opinion of the majority. Although the five-minute visit to the nest left doubts in the air—last year Donna made no noise when she arrived at the nest, nor did she begin to spruce up the nest. In addition, this year’s first arriving stork’s beak seemed to have a slightly different shape, as well as appearing unfamiliarly big…

 

So we had to search for last year’s photos of Donna to see if they were suitable for comparison. Here is a photo of Donna from April 16th of last year:

 

If you compare the two, some differences become apparent: the relationship of Donna’s beak to her head is shorter than that of this year’s guest; Donna’s beak is straight, but this stork’s beak bends upwards; the featherless red area around the eyes also differs some. And the biggest difference is the line where the beak meets the feathers—Donna is evenly feathered under the chin, but this year’s black stork  appears as if its feathers in that area have been cropped.

 

From this we conclude this year’s first black stork in front of the camera was not Donna, but probably a male bird. It’s possible that it’s last year’s invader, with whom Padis did battle. Unfortunately, we don’t have any suitable pictures to make that comparison.