Fall migration has begun for the white stork (the ones not living in Israel, that is), and while they have a strong presence in Israel during the spring migrations, during the fall migrations, the fly-over time is quite short. In spring, thousands of storks fly over Israel. They do not have a distinct path; they can be spotted throughout the country; and some stay for a week or more. On the return trip from Europe to Africa, they fly south over Jordan, cross into Israel near the dead sea, sleep one night in Israel and continue south to Africa.
We know this because for the past several years, we have been GPS-tracking white storks from several populations in Germany. This year, we are using newer, even more advanced technology--GPS trackers that not only track the location of the stork (and send 2 text messages a day with the stork's location and tag number) but also the movement of the stork. From the data on these transmitters, we can understand where the storks chose to eat, sleep, nest, etc. We can track their lives and also identify the causes of their deaths. The machine is solar -powered. It transmits signal location 12 hour a day, from 3p-3a, and the rest of the power is used to collect data. Survival rates of new-born storks are rather low (two have already died this year, in the first weeks of migration), so instead of waiting until next year's breeding season in Germany to download data via antennae (a relatively easy process due to the nest location and road networks in Germany), we are hoping to download data via antenna as they pass over Israel.
The idea is quite simple in theory. In practice, it is another story. At 3p and 9p every night, a text is supposed to be sent with the storks' locations. They fly in flocks, and rest in the dark hours, usually without much movement. Thus, the 9p location is a very important one. By following the texts we can roughly predict when a given stork will be in Israel, and then on any given evening, at 9p, we can definitively know if it has arrived. On Thursday, a little bit after 9p I received a call from my lab-mate that there was a stork in Israel for the night. The flock was sleeping very close to the Israel-Jordan border near the northern tip of the Dead Sea. He said he would be able to go alone, but if I wanted to come along, I was more than invited. I wanted to come along, so I changed into my hiking shoes and hiking pants, packed a bag, and met him at the entrance of the city.
Once we were on the way, he explained to me how he thought the night would go. With one device, the pinger (in Hebrew and in English), we would located the stork. The device pinged at various intensities depending on how close the stork was to the antenna that we pointed. Once we were close enough, we would use another antenna-ed device to download the data from the stork's transmitter. If, for whatever reason, we spooked the flock, and they flew across the border, we would sleep in the car and try to download data when they crossed back over in the morning. We would not be able to use the pinger in the morning, though because the GPS trackers stop transmitting signal at 3a. We would do it by sight.
I had already told my ulpan teacher that I might not be in class on Friday, and I was quite excited for the adventure. The We're Going on a Bear Hunt song/book was playing in my head (see the video below). My lab-mate and I get on well, and it didn't seem like it would be too hard. It was though. We were headed to the Northern tip of the Dead Sea, and when we got to the intersection (where Rt. 90 makes a turn to the right at a big gas station and there isn't a road straight and the road to the left is an army road), we drove straight. We got out, plugged in our pinger, and listened for the stork. There was a lot of feedback because we could see the Israel-Jordan border, there was a nearby army base with a number of antennas, but we did pick up a faint signal. It was NOT in the direction of the GPS coordinates sent via SMS a couple of hours before. Because of all the feedback on the pinger, we decided to try the original location before beginning a more extended search.
The initial location was down the left road a ways past the army base. My lab-mate told me that it was a restricted access road, but he reassured me that we would have no problems. Needless to say, we had all sorts of problems. We put the GPS coordinates into a GPS finder and got as close as we could to the expected location of the flock. The point was across the fence (which was maybe ten feet away) somewhere in the no-man's land between Israel and Jordan. We couldn't hear a signal with the pinger, though, so that meant we had no chance of downloading data. With another listen, we were able to pick up the same signal as before though, weak and with feedback, but present. It was behind us somewhere in the bush (Georgie, thanks for teaching me important vocab)! We repacked our gear into our little, compact rental car and drove back the way we came looking for a trail or path into the bush to find this stork. As we were driving, we were suddenly met by a jeep with blaring headlights. We stopped and got out of our car just as four soldiers, with guns raised climbed down from the jeep. It was a pretty scary sight, but I guess we weren't any less suspicious with our antennae near the border on a restricted road.
My lab-mate began to explain the situation, and the soldiers were in shock. At first they didn't understand...wait birdwatchers, at night, with weird high tech stuff...but then they started to catch on. They asked for our ids and told us we had to wait there until the police came and sorted us out. My lab-mate wasn't nervous, but he was upset by the stall. We only had about two and a half hours of GPS transmittance left. As we were waiting, my lab-mate got to talking with the soldiers, most of which were younger than him and on reserves duty. It was so Israeli when it came out that the soldiers who had stopped us, with guns raised, were disappointed that we were just bird watchers. Nothing more exciting or threatening. They joked about spicing up the story for the newspaper, and we all laughed a bit. Lucky for us, the police pulled up a few minutes later, our waiting game ended, temporarily...
(to be continued at a later date...it's a lot of reading for one night)
Substitute "bear" with "stork" and "day" with "night". This was playing in my head as the night started, and it is a pretty good forecast of what's to come in the next post.
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