THE IMAGE SUBMITTED BY THE WEBCAM LIVE (CLICK HERE)

 Short story of the webcam

For the first time in the history of Black stork research, this year we had the opportunity to follow the breeding season with a webcam.

First year: 2005

From 11 March to 5 September, an industrial surveillance system was operated at a Black stork nest. The system recorded approx. 20 000 video files, out of which 1282 contained Black stork movements. The Black storks arrived at the nest in March, were most active till the 14 April, but, due to unknown reason – possibly disturbance – they left the nest and didn’t breed in it this year. However, we gained useful knowledge on the occupation of the nest, the fight for the nest, the copulations and the nestbuilding. We also could prove that they use the nest - which was considered to have been abandonned - later during the summer: in June they came back, and built it again.

In 2006

The cam was switched on in the beginning of March. The storks were first seen on 23rd March. Fight for the nest was observed twice, and in the last week of March no storks were there. The electricity was switched off in the beginning of April because of the high flood of the river Danube. We were curiously waiting for the possibility to see what happened during the ten days of high flood. When the camera was switched on again, from the 8th April two storks were constantly building the nest, they only left it for very short periods. Sometimes they were sitting in it. Copulation was observed quite often. We didn't exactly know how many eggs they had. Sometimes three, two or only one egg was visible. We observed once that they covered one egg with moss in the middle of the nest. We think time to time this happens. Finally, there were 3 eggs, but unfortunately all of them went wrong. So we couldn't see the youngs hatching and growing.

In 2007

We could see 2 tiny Black storks hatching. But some kind of disease killed them at a very early age :(

We will try to apply better techniques for submitting our webcam live, because up till now we experienced more and more difficulties with the currently used technology.