Black stork Raivo

We caught Raivo from the area of the Paasvere forest district in Lääne-Virumaa on the early morning of 22 July. He was nesting in an artificial nest, i.e. we built one artificial nest near a broken nest in 1991 and only in 2006 it was inhabited by black storks. Watching pictures with our Latvian colleagues, we came to the conclusion that he should be more than ten years old – this is indicated by the greyish head. The eaglets of Raivo were by the time their father got the backpack more or less able to fly; therefore, Raivo started flying towards the south on 28 July. He flew to Belarus where he stayed for some days and the following trip took him across the Dardanelles and Turkey to Israel. The fish ponds in Israel are a good migration stopover for Eastern European black storks. Some of them stay there for the whole winter; the black stork ringed in Estonia has also wintered in Israel during several years.