Round about now is the end of the bustard season here. For now, they’re nicely visible in the wintry fields:
They tend to favour the Austrian rather than the Slovak side of the border, so a background of wind turbines is common:
I hope they’re smart enough to avoid them.
It’s a pleasant surprise that they choose to live so close to Bratislava:
They also share their habitat with a motorway and plenty of deer: 
They are quite shy, so we couldn’t get as close as we would have liked, but we did get better pics than last year:
This may be the end of bustard season, but it’s also the start of something special. Today I spotted a familiar figure in the distance:
The ring makes me fairly confident that this is the male from the pair who we were papping last year. His early appearance would also fit with that pair seeming to have got their breeding started earlier than the other storks. Hoping his girl will appear soon….
Ooh, excited about the storks!