Young storks ringed in Hugstetten – March

. This year’s ringing season for young white storks in Breisgau recently started with the climb up the Hugstetter church tower. Stork father Gustav Bickel also took the opportunity to provide information about the currently very good situation for the symbolic birds and to train a new helper.

The mother stork from Hugstetten, who was already quite experienced at the age of 21 and originally comes from Alsace, fled indignantly when the hatch to the roof of the church tower of St. Gallus in Hugstetten opened. Visibly annoyed, she circles around the church tower, but otherwise remains peaceful. Three stork friends dared the steep ascent through the tower and the belfry to ring the three young storks in the nest. Traditionally, the young on the Hugstetter Tower are the first in the region to hatch. Often, however, this is their downfall due to bad weather. But this year they are well nourished and have already developed very far, reports Gustav Bickel, the chairman of the Breisgau White Stork Association. Already a week later or in ten days there would have been a danger that the young would try to escape from the nest themselves if there was such a disturbance. That’s why you always have to watch for exactly the right moment when ringing.

This year, Bickel received support from Stefan Graner from the March fire brigade, who has represented the stork father in ringing before. The third member of the group is Hans Kurth, a self-employed arborist from Freiburg, who is to take care of the ringing and care of rare black storks on behalf of the bird sanctuary in Radolfzell. But first he has to learn how to handle the young animals properly, explains the 41-year-old father, who has always enjoyed climbing and is mostly involved in species protection and ecological compensation projects. He is very happy that he can learn ringing here from Gustav Bickel.

Stork father Bickel, who is also supported by many fire brigades in the region, always has a few current stories from the stork year ready. For example, a male has been living in Merdingen for four years, whose leg got caught in a rope and later died. But despite his disability, he keeps coming back, he currently lives with another male.

More problematic is a new, third nest in Merdingen that a pair of storks have built on the church roof, explains Bickel. The nest was dismantled several times on behalf of the church, but the storks always built it up again. At some point there were eggs in the nest, and then it was hardly permissible to remove it.

Scouting out such a nest by drone and possibly scaring off breeding stork parents is also not permitted. There may have been such a disturbance in Buchheim, where the birds had been brooding in their nest for far too long. Bickel emphasizes that he cannot say whether this is due to the installation of a new observation camera, but if incubation is interrupted for too long, the developing young could die due to hypothermia in the eggs.

In general, things are looking pretty good for the white stork in the region at the moment, says club chairman Bickel. There are currently around 200 nests in the club’s catchment area from Bad Krozingen to Weisweil and Kirchzarten, 16 of which are new. 180 pairs were breeding or already had offspring.

Among other things, there are two young storks in Holzhausen, three young in Neuershausen, three young in Umkirch and two offspring on the Gottenheim church tower. In Bötzingen, the stork parents were successful three times – there will be ringing there on Thursday -, in Ihringen also three times, in Wasenweiler Bickel was able to recognize two young.

The situation in Eichstetten, on the other hand, is somewhat unclear, reports Bickel. There are seven nests on high power poles here, so it is unclear how many young have already hatched there. These would not be ringed this year either, explains the father of the storks. The effort is simply too great, not least because the power lines have to be switched off temporarily.

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