Is Erdenet flying to Nepal? (Wednesday, October 12, 2005)
All three Mongolian storks are on their way. Or more precisely - the storks that were marked this year. Surprisingly, Tuya's transmitter is still working; we monitored her last year. But she is still staying at her nesting place.
As I already wrote, Erdenet started to fly first on September 29. By all accounts, Marko started on September 30. And Kublaj, finally, left his nest on October 5 or 6. Of course that we were excited whether at least one of these storks would fly to Himalaya. That did not happen as they all joined the "Chinese highway" - the trace the the storks from central Mongolia, Chingiz and Tuya, flew along last year.
Erdenet, however, has surprised us twice. The first time by the fact that he keeps on flying without breaks and the second time by the curve of his journey the last days. He made a rush turn westward over Burma and now is flying along Brahmaputra river to Bangladesh. Who knows, perhaps he'll fly to Nepal where we found one chick last year that we had rung. But even if Erdenet flew on westward a bit, it would be clear that Black Storks don't fly across Himalaya but around it.