Young Max with her mother, 1999, in their Avanches nest (photo: Natural History Museum, Fribourg, Switzerland)
Fribourg, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The high winds that tore through Switzerland, Italy, France and Portugal at the end of January caused enormous damage. They also unsettled a bird who has been followed by thousands: Max the Swiss stork.
Max was born in Avanches, Vaud in 1999, where she was banded. She has become the longest-living satellite-tracked bird, summering in Germany near the German-Swiss border on Lake Constance. Max heads south, generally to Spain via France and sometimes on to North Africa, every winter.
The bird was reported to be in some difficulty 29 January, presumably due to Klaus, the major storm that moved through southern Europe. It flew 200km to the Gulf of Rosas on the northeastern corner of Spain. Monday 2 February the Natural History Museum in Fribourg, which tracks the bird publicly, said that it has preferred to stay in Catalonia where heavy rains have been falling, near the Mediterrean, before it continues its flight back home to Switzerland.
It spent the earlier part of the autumn and winter near Madrid.
Related story: “Max the stork bids Swiss summer farewell,” 10 September 2007
This work by genevalunch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
News story, GenevaLunch, 2 February 2009.
Filed under: Society
Tags: Avanches, banded birds, banded stork, bird, Max, stork, white stork
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March 2nd, 2009 at 10:31 am
[...] say that Sunday morning, 1 March, a new male approached Max’s nest in Tuefingen, Germany. Max returns to the nest every year after spending the early winter further south, often in Spain. Max hesitated for a [...]