Tuya has two youngs (Avian Pass, Tuesday, July 5, 2005)
Driving for a new generator cost us some time in the morning, so we did not leave Ulaanbaatar just before noon, after a short stop at the market. After some fifty kilometres, we left a comfortable asphalt road for a cart-road. According to the GPS, we are approximately twenty kilometres direct distance from Tuya's nest at the verge of the Khustai national park. We can drive only some twenty kilometres per hour off the road, so after an hour or so we descent along a side valley to the wide alluvial plain of the river Tuul and immediately turn to another side valley at the beginning of which are located cliffs with the nest. We stop nearby and see a stork fly off the nest - it is Tuya, the receiver is beeping and we can that she has transmitter antenna on her back. We feel a mixture of joy and satisfaction - the female stork we equipped with a transmitter last year endured all the hardships of a long journey to the wintering grounds and back and has nested in the same place as last year.
Possibly, she has the same partner. We are eagerly climbing up a steep slope to the nest in a shallow cave to check the number of the young and their age. "There are two young, still quite white," Kamil reports from the opposite slope from where he can see inside the nest. Two young storks are about 25 days old, three weeks younger than the only young in the nest at the same time last year. They try to scare us away by deep growling and when this does not help, they use a heavier calibre - disgorge food they must have received from their mother just a while ago. Partially digested Amur Frogs frogs do not smell very nice. Gombo identifies them by red spots on the belly. We have learned something new about feeding habits of storks in this area.
It is clear that we can capture Tuya when on our way back from western Mongolia, our main area of operation. We leave and on our way through the national park we stop to check the nest on a rocky cliff where we unsuccessfully tried to lure a stork couple by a "dummy" last year. There are two youngs there, too, with one of their parents standing in the nest. It seems that this has been a relatively good season for storks.
On our way to an information centre and out of the national park we see a Przewalski's horse. These animals have been successfully released in this area after breeding in captivity. We are totally satisfied for today and set off westwards.