A stork that flew from Germany to die on a Free State farm in December last year is now making headlines on the internet, the Volksblad newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Prinzesschen (Princess), a white stork (Ciconia ciconia), died on December 23 last year on the farm Uitzicht between Wesselsbron and Hoopstad, which belongs to Free State farmer Buks de Klerk.
The German version of Wikipedia, said Prinzesschen was equipped with a signal device by Dr Michael Kaatz in 1993. She was 16 years old and one of the oldest storks monitored in this way.
Prinzesschen did not, like most of her kind, stay over in Spain in winter, but rather travelled to the Hoopstad area. Every year she flew about 10 000km and once recorded a record flight speed of more than 80km/h.
The stork was well known and loved in Germany where her photos appeared on stamps, and various books were written about her. A television programme on her was also recorded.
It seems that from December 21 last year the signal from her tracking device disappeared.
The newspaper reported that De Klerk on December 23 saw the stork, which he knew from past sightings, in a field and after a close inspection saw that she was sick. Looking for the bird later the same day, he found her dead.
De Klerk found Kaatz’s particulars on the signal device and emailed him about Prinzesschen’s death.
Kaatz and another bird expert, Klaus Tummler, who studied Prinzesschen and other white storks during their local winter stayover a few years ago, arrived in South Africa recently. They exhumed the bird’s body and found that she had died due to natural causes.
Prinzesschen was reburied in the garden at Uitzicht with her own headstone.
Kaatz works at Storchenhof in Loburg, a stork farm where injured and orphaned storks are treated. — Sapa