January
  • January 1      All the 3 storks stayed at their winter habitats: Kristina in river basin of Falémé river (eastern Senegeal), Zuzana east of Tana lake (Ethiopia) and Oskar in river basin of Mbokou river (in the most eastern part of Central African Republic).

  • January 3      African Odyssey '97 expedition left Prague for Addis Abeba. The crew included Miroslav Bobek, Frantisek Pojer, Lubomir Peske, Khalil Baalbaki, Gérard Jadoul and Pavel Mikes. The objection was to follow Zuzana and search for other winter habitat areas (used by black storks and additional European migrant birds).

  • January 19      Zuzana's ground transmitter signal has been detected in a mountain area east of Tana lake (north of Debre Tabor town, Ethiopia) by the expedition crew.

  • January 20      Plans for observing Zuzana in her winter habitat drastically changed. After tough journey through mountain terrain, the crew found Zuzana's communication set in a hut of Seged village. Shed had been killed (together with at least two additional black storks) by amharian farmers. Several winterizing black storks were observed in the valley where Zuzana had died.

  • January 24      The expedition continued exploring black storks winter habitats. I a single valley, there were at least 10 black storks encountered. However, in such a densely colonised and deforested area they were almost constantly disturbed. The crew persuaded an Ethiopian orthodox church priest to provide a marking ring of black stork that nad been marked on the 15th of June 1993. This had happened in a nest near Luhacovice (Czech Republic), when the stork was just a baby. The village people killed the stork "because he was sitting on the church roof and disturbed the worship ceremony". Afterwards, the expedition crew helped to do some enlightenment among the local people community.

  • January 30      After travelling for 11 days using horses, mules and donkeys (all rented from the local village people), the expedition finished the mission in an area east of Tana lake.

Miroslav Bobek      


Texts by Miroslav Bobek and František Pojer
Photo by Khalil Baalbaki, Gérard Jadoul and archive of Africka odysea
Design by Tom Vild
Page by Lenka Hampapová
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