It’s been almost 14 months since the ringing and tagging of 10 young storks in Feres village by the Max Planck Institute and Evros Delta Management Authority and unfortunately the last data update about them shows that only one of the three remaining storks is still alive.

Pelopidas, one of the strongest storks of the team, didn’t make it. It was the only one who flew last year until South Africa. This spring, it started its trip by flying to Suez and after a few short flights in the nearby areas it went to Nile, Egypt. It stayed there until 19.07.2014 when it flew to South Soudan and after that, in 30.07.2014, it flew to Dongola where it was reported dead in 10.08.2014. Pelopidas lived for 382 days after its tagging and it died almost 2.450 km away from the nest it was born.

Neni seems to be dead too, as there are no signs of movement from its transmitter since April.

Sylvia is the luckiest of the 10 storks being the only one still alive, continuing its trip. Sylvia spent most of the summer in Touz Lake in Turkey and approximately in 11.08.2014 started flying south. In 21.08.2014 it reached Alexandretta, in 23.08 Syria and in 25.08 it flew back to Africa. Since 28.08 it is staying in Chad near the place where it was last winter. We can assume that it is accompanied by other storks and they will spend together the winter in the same place as last year. We hope that Sylvia will be ok and it will return to us soon.

We want to thank our friend Eva Stets for her efforts in monitoring the storks’ route and providing us the necessary data.