looduskalender.ee

Black stork Raivo was the first to arrive this year – on April 1st. Last year Raivo was clearly too late for a successful nesting. This year he is here three weeks earlier. This gives hope for issue – provided that a mate is found, of course. The other black storks with monitoring devices move purposefully towards Estonia and there won’t be any such late arrivals as last year. 

See the migration map:

http://birdmap.5dvision.ee/

 

Raivo was the first black stork (ring 7014), who got a solar panel fed GPS transmitter on his back as a "rucksack“, in July 2006. Earlier two black storks were fitted with battery-fed satellite transmitters but the batteries didn’t even last one year and on top of that the data that arrived were rather imprecise. Raivo nests in West Virumaa and has been very successful during four years, bringing up 3-4 young every year. The young have always been very well fed. Two young birds from his nest were provided with transmitters but sadly none of them reached the wintering areas; they perished before getting there.

 

In 2010 Raivo’s nesting was unsuccessful, he arrived too late to the nest and it was already occupied.