A year with Andreja.

A year with Andreja is a year told in points on a map, and it begins in the nest where she was first ringed. Andreja is one of the white storks followed by the LifeTrack White Stork SW Germany study, and because she transmits often, her whole year can be read like a diary. Each dot is a day, each gap a long flight, and the line between them is the shape of a life spent between two distant homes.

The spring return

Andreja spends the early spring in the north, close to the village where she was raised. White storks come back to the same nests year after year, and her points settle in one place for weeks, as she and her mate stand side by side on a rooftop and begin the slow work of a new season. The signals come in bursts, each one a small confirmation that she is exactly where she means to be.

The long glide south

By late summer her points begin to move. At first they drift, a few kilometres a day, as she feeds and gathers strength in the wet meadows. Then comes the first real push, and the dots stretch into a line that runs southwest. Andreja does not flap her way across the map the way we might imagine. She climbs the warm air and lets it carry her, and her transmitter goes quiet for hours at a time while she is high above the ground.

The African winter

The southern end of her line settles into a place of warm grass and shallow water, far from any snow. Here the points are close together and unhurried. This is the part of the year that asks nothing of her but feeding and resting, and the map shows it in the lazy cluster of a bird who has found what she came for.

The road home

Then, as the northern days begin to lengthen, the line turns around. The return is faster than the going, because a stork knows the way, and because the pull of the old nest is strong. Her final points land back on the same rooftop where the year began, and the loop closes.

A year with Andreja is a circle drawn by a bird. You can hold the whole thing in one hand, and still it contains a season of patience, a long voyage, and a homecoming.