Tagging Storks

A few weeks ago, I was invited by Andrea Flack to join her and Wolfgang Fiedler in an afternoon of stork tagging.  Being married to that "fisher guy," I've only seen mammals up close so this was a huge opportunity for me.  Can you believe that we've been here for four years and not only is my German still terrible but I have never  been with an ornithologist out in the field?  I mean, Scott works at the Max Planck Institute for ORNITHOLOGY…

Anyway, after seeing Scott in the field tagging and tracking fishers, it was interesting to be around Andrea while she worked up juvenile storks.  They are quite a common sight around Radolfzell, either flying or trailing behind a mowing tractor and I had always assumed that because they were such a large bird, they would be difficult or even dangerous to handle.  As it turns out I was so wrong!  From what I observed throughout the day, these birds are pretty relaxed.  They allowed the scientists to handle them (and they were handled very carefully) without having to be sedated, and all of the measuring, weighing, and fitting them with state of the art tags (used to track migration), only took a matter of minutes.

On a side note, and to explain the children in some of the photos below, the Institute has a pretty amazing outreach program via MaxCine.  So for the first half of the afternoon, we were followed around by about twenty students.  Having a toddler who loves the outdoors and animals, I find that these programs are super important and I hope that wherever we are in ten years, they'll be something like this offered to the community.  Otherwise, Max will be stuck following his doctor dad around (probably as punishment) for hours on end in order to learn to "appreciate" science and the environment.  At least with these programs, they're fun, hands on, AND you get to chill out with your friends outside of school whilst learning.

So, all in all, it was a very rewarding afternoon where I got to play photographer and Scott got to play babysitter (score!).  I will admit though, I was pretty nervous about the whole thing.  I'm used to only taking photographs for our family or for Scott's work (which I can tell him to eff off if he doesn't like how I do something) so to take photos highlighting someone else's project and doing it tastefully is new to me.  I hope I have more opportunities like this in the future but until then, we will continue on the LaPoint journey following this post.  So get ready for some mountains, some cows, some goats and maybe some yodeling (not really, but it would have been awesome to hear someone yell RICOLA! from the very top of the mountain).

i want to thank Andrea for letting me tag (no pun intended) along with her for the afternoon.  it was really an amazing and educational experience.  i would also like to thank Scott for taking an afternoon off so i could go live out my dream for about five hours.  i think i owe him one, but eh, who's counting;)

▲when the storks were not being tagged or banded, their heads were covered to keep them from getting stressed out▲

▲photo on the left: wolfgang weighing a stork// photo on the right: taking the stork to get banded▲

▲the storks were also banded by the person in charge of keeping track of the storks in the area.  nests are actually built specifically for the storks to encourage them to come back each year as well as giving them a safe place to live.▲

▲if i had known that the fire department was involved, maybe i would have brought Max along because that kid is into his trucks and trains at the moment▲

▲at one point i was asked if i wanted to go up when they put the storks back in the nests.  i MAY be terrified of heights, but i'm not going to say no to that!▲

▲i was really amazed by how close some of these nest were to each other and how the storks didn't seem to mind.  i guess it was the stork equivalent to living in apartments.▲