>
Standing out in the road yesterday afternoon with ace reporters Hans-Willi and Birgit, rewarding ourselves for a good day’s work in the garden with an Eisgrub beer, we witnessed the autumn migration of the storks.
“Impressive” doesn’t come close.
Even more so when you read up about it (and it’s a good thing I did, because the prevailing opinion was that we had Canada geese in our sights. Closer examination of the image suggests storks. Especially the trailing legs.).
At least 4 groupings of this size, flying southwest towards their winter quarters in France, Spain and – to a lesser extent – North Africa.
These guys set off yesterday morning from the Mecklenburg Lakes in north-eastern Germany, which is a staging area for birds from Scandinavia, Finland and Belarus.
They reached us at shortly before 5 pm and headed on at a steady 80kmh, honking merrily amongst themselves.
I wasn’t quite aware how big this really is.
BirdLife International, an alliance of conservation group, involved over 40,000 people tracking and logging migratory activities a couple of weeks ago and NABU (Naturschutzbund = Nature Protection Society), the German conservation group, has excellent on-line resources, including web-based sighting reporting.
Which we duly did.
And talking about migratory birds….
Mainz Daily Photo 
>DH and I often stop to watch migratory birds, because they are beauty and grace in flight. Their basic instinct awes me. Hawk Ridge in Duluth, MN often records about 94,000 migratory birds during the fall. We often spend a week-end there to watch. In southern MN (and Wisconsin)there are stopping-off marshy places along the Mississippi where thousands of Tundra Swans rest on their journey, usually in November. The sounds coming from the flocks who are eating is remarkable. I understand your fascination with the birds you saw. Incidentally, it’s a great theme (blue) photo for November. I’m still pondering that one!!