March 1999
  • March 3     School pupils in France awarded two new satellites and ground transmitters to Minister of Environment, Milos Kuzvart, who took part in an official visit together with president Vaclav Havel. The France LPO (League for Bird Protection) under the aegis of Minister of Area Planning and Environment, Dominique Voynet, deeply regretted the death of Hynek.

  • March 4     David was on his way home: the satellites located him deep in Spain in the morning, 250 kilometers far from his winter habitat.

  • March 5     David flew to Ebra valley and stopped west-northwest of Zaragoza. During two days, he passed the distance of 400 kilometers.

  • March 6     The satellites captured signals from Kristyna's transmitter again in area between Kedouga and Saraya in Eastern Senegal. For the very first time, we started to fear that Kristyna might not be all right.

  • March 10     David, who slowed down during flying over Pyreneans, was located near Cahors in southwestern France in the morning.

  • March 12     David reached eastern France.

  • March 14     Alejandro Tores (senior citizen) watched Jonas in fields near Guadalquivira, first together with 20 young black storks, and then with 31 black storks (including adult storks). David was located near Munich in the afternoon.

  • March 15     Kristyna still was not returning back home; we remembered she had usually reached many hundreds kilometers towards her home in the middle of March in the previous years. Analysis of new satellite data showed that Kristyna's transmitter did not move at all during at least a week. Although we hoped that the transmitter did not worked properly, it looked Kristyna probably had died in bushes between Kedouga and Saraya.

  • March 18     Based on signals of his ground transmitter, David was located in the Brdy Hills area. He stayed near the nest where he and Kristyna had raised three babies last year.

  • March 20     David was still waiting for Kristyna (or other female stork) on the nest. The nest was continuously monitored by video capturing device.

  • March 28     The video device captured a stork with the same metal/color rings as Kristyna had appeared in the nest; only a couple of adult black storks should have such combination of rings. Because her satellite transmitter sent signals from Western Africa, Kristyna might lost her communication set

  • March 30     The video device situated close to former nest of Kristyna and David captured another black stork.


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
Supported by the company Internet servis, a.s.

Africkaodysea@Internet.cz