Black Storks

Estonia - looduskalender.ee, 

Here is the info the site released this morning for the Black Storks pair...
This is the address to read the article  http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/19823
and here is the text in case after a while the address is invalid ...

On Thursday an unknown male black stork arrived in the black stork nest; naturally Tiina who had been alone in the nest for more than 3 weeks welcomed the arrival graciously. As a refresher and for those who didn’t know, in autumn the female leaves earlier for the wintering grounds and black stork adults spend the winter apart (meeting again at the nest)..

 

Tiina has laid 2 eggs in the nest during these weeks (most likely unfertilized since generally ”occasional liasons” are not undertaken at the migration). There was nothing to be done about it, the eggs simply ”had to come”. After the arrival of the unknown stork there were matings; after that the male threw the laid eggs out of the nest. The question is, was the action intentional, and on what urge did the male act?

 

On Friday morning Tiina laid another egg, of course this too was unfertilized and the male crushed this egg too and hid the shell debris. We have seen some intrusions in black stork nests by the webcam (below an image from 2008). Almost every time some egg has been demolished in the conflict – it has loooked as if we have had to do with carelessly fighting birds.

 

The events on Thursday and Friday however hint at the male not wanting to raise ”strange” – to him – progeny; he did not know that the eggs were not fertilized.

 

Laying more eggs may however become a problem for the female: 3 large eggs have already used up much substances and energy in the body. We will see how things develop.