Sonja

Of course. We got laws here that can get a person into trouble when disturbing a stork couple once they established the nest. Living not only in the fast densifying countryside but also near the stork station with the dayly free handouts comes at a price. Storks will nest over there on anything tall enough that did not move significantly in the last 24 hours...

Well Remmelt, how was your weather recently?

I know that when there is a catastrophal storm when the storklets are already half grown, storks loosing their offspring wont try a new nesting attempt any more and start roaming and getting social. I remember on May 26th 2009 we had an epic storm in upper swabia and nearly all storks not yet able to fly perished or at least got untimely grounded with loss of the nest and/or injuries calling for human care at a rehab center, whilst almost all adults survived it without any physical damage. A lot of beraved adults left their nests almost at once without any clean up attempts at all -- others gave up some days later, after some bemused and listles tries to drag a few twigs together again. It was way to early for propper migrating but they eventually gathered like fledged juveniles in August do normaly, circled like kites in a kettle and dropped from the sky where ever they spotted something of interest, often in areas where you usually see no stork ever outside high migration, wetlands at higher elevations or welldrained level land with much intensive feed crop farming.