Sex and Violence

Spring here has got the juices flowing in the various inhabitants. At Lake Kuchajda, sex-crazed drakes are beating each other up to get access to the females. Fortunately they’re not really built for duelling, but they give it a damn good go:

https://youtu.be/GGm0GsoV1j0

After sighting our male stork last weekend, we were very keen to go and investigate the nest this Saturday. And we found:

Two slightly wind-blasted, but resplendently-chest-feathered, storks.

We were slightly distracted by the appearance of a white-tailed eagle, to which the couple responded with a display of mantling to protect their nest:

Courtship then resumed with a display of mirroring behaviour:

Then a little spot of grooming:

And the action started:

We were rather surprised at this point, because the ringed bird, which we had always thought was the male, was the one underneath. Zooming in on our pictures from this year and last, we found that it is indeed the same beast, numbered AE750:

A little further investigation turned up a splendid site, which catalogues sightings of storks born in Schwaben this century. It seems that our boy is in fact our girl, was born in 2011 on the banks of the Danube near Moosheim, and bred in the Burgenland in Austria in 2013 before hopping over the Morava to grace Devinska Nova Ves last year. Here’s to another successful season!