First Flight

I missed the first flight of one of the the two fledgling storks. I was just in time to see his tail as he left the nest.It seemed more as though he had fallen out of the nest rather than flown off, but I knew he could fly when he flew into the nest from off camera a few minutes later.

Since then he has been away from the nest for a while every evening.

The other stork seems very agitated when he is left alone and I wondered why he didn't do as his sibling and go joy-flying around.

This morning, my time, evening his time, he flew. I don't know if it was his first flight, but it was an exciting moment for me.

I will let the following sequence of pictures tell the story:

For the birds

In the nest on top of a chimney several storeys above the main street of the ancient town of Gengenbach in Germany, where they were hatched a few months ago, two young storks await their mother who will soon bring them their food.

I have been watching them through a webcam that that can be trained on them or on various other sights in the town below. It's a sight that I would not be able to enjoy if I were a tourist on the ground.

These young storks are as large as their mother, and I marvel at how mindful of each other's space they seem to be. They barely fit in, or rather, on, their nest, which is more like a platform than a nest. No safety railings here. They could easily jostle each other out of the nest to their doom. When they spread their large wings, they seem to be mindful of where the other one is and so do not inadvertently knock each other off.

Patient watching rewarded with some amusing poses:

One bird, four legs?

Two birds, three beaks?

Two birds, one head?

Recently they have been spreading their wings preparing for flight

Just after I snapped this screen shot, this stork, the larger of the two, rose straight up about a foot into the air as he experimented with flapping his wings. It happened too fast to capture that exciting event.

One day soon they will take to the air on their maiden flight. I fervently hope I will witness that moment.

They will soar above the main street of Gengenbach

Perhaps someone in the market in front of the Rathaus (Townhall) will look up and spot them:

Then they will go about their mission of delivering babies all over the world. No? Well, that was what I was taught in those days when that was as much sex education as you got officially.