The island
The motor of our river boat took its reverse run and the prow went off the bank. We stayed alone. Our travel after black storks started on Gornyj island which can be found in Yenisei, three hundred kilometers north from Krasnoyarsk. We had been communicating with Siberian ornithologists for a long time before we left for Russia, but their information was usually three, five or even seven years old... The only exception was in Gornij where a nest with hatches should have resided. Anyway, after we got to the island and stood alone we started to doubt.
"There's only a few bigger trees," wandered Frantisek Pojer. "And the storks won't probably nest in bushes..."
So we started to search through the island. There was a strip of grass fed by a herd of cows and horses along the river side.Behind, a pretty dense bushes started to appear and, at the center of the island, cow parsnip grew. Except for a bare foreland at the end of the island, where herdsmen built their penthouses, clouds of mosquitoes attacked us.
"If we don't find the nest, I'll have to shoot myself,"said our Russian guide - ornithologist Andrei Baykalov - after we initially did not succeed. "So will we,"murmured Premek Rabas. We did not find the nest the other day either. We didn't even see a stork. "Let's try it once more," said Lubos Peske a together with Premek and Franta were ready for another inspection.
I unwrapped my satellite phone and thought about what I was gonna say in the next live radio entry. Perhaps I could talk about the herdsmen who don't get any money for their work but only taxes in produce. And that their main task is to trawl sturgeons. Which may cause imprisonment...
"Stork!" shouted suddenly our Russian guide Andrei Baykalov.
And he was right. In spite of mosquitoes, the island got beautiful at once.
