So the storks have started out on the long and difficult journey... More precisely on the morning of the 22nd of August they 'got up' early and cleaned out a bit in their nest so that next spring (when they are back) their home in the Hungarian village called Darány would wait for them nice and comfortable. After these arrangements the good parents (Ludmilla and Chuck) asked their four children namely Una, Unika, Uránusz and Unikum in their clattering stork language to get prepared for the long-long road to be taken between Hungary and Cape Colony down in South Africa.* And they flew away... all our stork friends whose home is partly here in Hungary... with the good summer weather leaving after them. The three stork webcams now only show the empty nests in the rain, but those lovely moments of hatching, getting grown up and learning to fly will stay with us nevertheless... Wishing you a safe journey! Come back in spring! :)
I have a strange feeling in me as I think of the big adventure the storks embark upon now, and I cannot help remembering my own life. We all have aims and dreams in life, goals to work for and to be attained, a long and difficult journey we have to make in order to reach what we want. And we have to do this again and again, each time as a new goal appears. Exactly as the storks, although they have the same goal every year, that is to bring up their 'kids' safely, and reach to the warm place before winter.

* The east-european storks, among them the Hungarians fly through the Bosporus then towards the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea which they follow until they reach Africa at the Suez-bay. From this point they fly along the Nile and then cross Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Zimbabwe as far as Cape Colony. Some of the storks however stop in the middle of Africa and spend the European winter months there. The whole Darány stork family has been ringed so ornithologists will be able to establish what places 'our' storks visit. The parents will be back next spring, but the youngsters may spend their first year in Africa and return to Hungary only in 2009.