V3 · Sonnet

White stork · one nest through the year

A year with a stork's nest

Two model years, ten days at a time. A hatched box means “no observation”: nobody looked, so nothing is known — not even whether the nest was empty. The data are teaching models, not a record of a real nest.

The year: two strips side by side

General rhythm: off. The strips show only records from visits.

    Teaching model: seasons A, B and C are invented examples for practising how to read gaps, not a record of a real nest. No ten-day period has a photograph. The selected period opens in the panel alongside, or, on a very narrow screen or with large text, beneath its own row.

    Diagram: an observer on the ground and a nest on a pole On the left an observer stands on the ground and looks up, along a dashed line of sight, at the front edge of a nest on a pole on the right. The inside of the nest is hatched because it cannot be seen from the ground. Illustrative drawing, not to scale.
    Our own diagram, not a photograph or a map. From the ground the rim of the nest is visible; what lies in the bowl may not be. This is a second gap alongside a missing visit: “not seen” does not mean “not there”.

    How to read the boxes

    • —no observation: no visit, nothing is known
    • 0no bird seen: the visit took place
    • 11 adult seen
    • 2pair seen at the nest
    • Wadult lying low (possible incubation)
    • Kfeeding, chicks visible
    • Ćyoung standing and exercising their wings
    • Lflights of young seen
    • Onest empty after fledging (record)
    • 23.03red date: the day entered in the visit note

    Grey shows the nesting stage in the record, not the number of birds or “activity”. The line at the bottom of a box is the observation time in the ten-day period on a single scale: the full width of the box = 60 minutes. No line = no visit.

    Tally of ten-day periods in the selected strips

    Left strip · Model B

    No observation (no visit)
    0
    Visit, no bird seen
    0
    Visit with a record of birds or stage
    0
    Periods in total
    0
    First bird record (not the arrival date)
    Flights of young

    Right strip · Model C

    No observation (no visit)
    0
    Visit, no bird seen
    0
    Visit with a record of birds or stage
    0
    Periods in total
    0
    First bird record (not the arrival date)
    Flights of young

    The first three rows add up to 21 ten-day periods. “No record” means there is no document, not proof that the event did not happen.

    What you must not read into an empty box

    The year is made of records, not of the course of the birds’ lives. Here are five readings that look natural but do not follow from the record.

    Intervals between recorded dates (model)

    Frame from version V1: about 33 days from the start of incubation to hatching and 60–65 days from hatching to the first attempts at flight [1]. The recorded dates are the days of the notes, not the days of the events, so an interval is a question put to the notes, not a verdict. An interval that cannot be calculated is not entered as zero.

    Model A

    Lying low → first chicks: 14.04 → 18.05 = 34 days. Against the frame of c. 33 days: +1 day.

    First chicks → first flight: 18.05 → 28.07 = 71 days. Against the frame of 60–65 days: longer by 6–11 days.

    Model B

    Lying low → first chicks: 28.04 → 06.07 = 69 days. The gap of 1–30 June lies within this interval, so this is not the incubation time.

    First chicks → first flight: 06.07 → 08.08 = 33 days. Shorter than the frame by 27–32 days: the chicks were first recorded when they were already large.

    Model C

    Lying low → first chicks: 24.04 → no record of chicks. The interval cannot be calculated; it is not 0 days.

    First chicks → first flight: no record. No record does not prove that there were no flights.

    Cut line · below is general knowledge about the species, not a record of any nest

    The species’ typical rhythm

    A general outline of the white stork in Poland, month by month. Weather and late arrival shift the stages, and this list does not describe any particular nest or add anything to the strips of the year. The list covers only March to September. In winter most storks that nest in Poland are away from the country, so an empty nest is then a normal sight [1].

    1. MarchSpring returns

      Arrivals peak in the third ten days of March. Storks may visit the nest and carry in material. The date of return differs between birds and seasons.

    2. AprilStart of nesting

      Most storks return to their nests before 10 April. Egg laying may begin in the first ten days of the month, but late broods start much later. A bird sitting low is an observation of behaviour, and eggs cannot be seen from the ground.

    3. MayNesting under way

      After about 33 days of incubation the young hatch. Not all of them need be visible above the rim of the nest straight away. The adults warm the offspring and bring food.

    4. JuneRaising the young

      The adults supply the young with food. What matters is not only the nest but also the availability of food around it. A late pair may still be at an earlier stage of nesting.

    5. JulyGetting ready to fly

      The first attempts at flight come about 60–65 days after hatching. In mid-July the young often stand for a long time flapping their wings. Delayed broods need to be observed later.

    6. AugustEnd of the stay

      Storks gather on shared feeding grounds, forming assemblies (“sejmiki”). The migration to the wintering grounds begins roughly in mid-August. Late broods may still remain in their nests.

    7. SeptemberLate departures

      Birds from late broods may set off only in September. An empty nest does not say when the last stork left if there was a break between visits.

    c. 33 days

    From the start of incubation to the young hatching. This is biological time, not a calendar date [1].

    60–65 days

    From hatching to the first attempts at flight. Not every brood starts at the same time [1].

    23 localities

    In July 2023 park staff monitored the stork in 23 localities around Biebrza National Park. This is a compilation of many nests, not the year of a single bird [3].

    Sources, changes and limits

    Sources of general knowledge

    1. TP “Bocian”, Poradnik ochrony bociana białego [Guide to protecting the white stork] — biology, timing and feeding grounds, pp. 6–7. Link carried over from V2; in V3 not opened or re-checked. The scope of the conclusions needs confirmation by an expert.
    2. TP “Bocian”, instrukcja dla obserwatorów [instructions for observers] — recognising young birds and the limits of a single check. Link carried over from V2; to be checked.
    3. BbPN, raport z monitoringu w 2023 roku [2023 monitoring report] — white stork, p. 49. Link carried over from V2; to be checked.
    4. Context photograph from V2: nest in Wyczechowo, Bartosz Czarnecki / Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Link only: the photograph is not embedded in V3, because it does not concern this nest and the page is meant to work offline.

    Design inspiration, not a source of knowledge: the principle “density of documents is not density of events” from the Histography site. Nothing was imported from there.

    A tip for observers

    Observe from an accessible place, without entering private property and without approaching the nest. Record the date, the weather, the visible behaviour and what could not be established [2].

    What changed relative to V2

    • The chronology-checker form was removed from the story. The relationship is kept as a static table of intervals (section above), without date fields and without an automatic verdict.
    • The register of the reader’s own observations (saved in the browser under the key atlas-v2-125) was removed from the reader’s view. V3 does not save, read or delete anything; data left in the browser by V2 remain untouched.
    • “Own season” in the comparison tool was removed along with the register. Three models are compared.
    • The 12-month calendar and “What do you see?”: the calendar moved to the cut-off static section, and the separation of observation from conclusion moved to the ten-day period panel (“Cautious conclusion”). Of the twelve months, March to September were kept; winter is covered in a single sentence, and the “For your notebook” tips were left out.
    • The tally tile with an estimate of the arrival shift was removed. V2 calculated an “arrival shift in days” from period numbers, but a period number is not an arrival date. It was replaced by the row “First bird record (not the arrival date)” in the tally of periods, which gives only the period of the first record. The withdrawn “New 30 attempts” link in the navigation has not returned either.
    • The photograph from an external server was removed from rendering; a link remains.
    • Model notes: wording that settles a cause (e.g. “brood abandoned”, “eggs chilled”) was removed, because the model does not justify it. In Model B the state of the period 21–30 April was changed from “pair” (V2) to “lying low”, because the note has two observations (24.04 pair, 28.04 low position) and the box holds one state.

    Limits

    • Models A, B and C are invented for learning to read gaps. They are not measurements and have no witnesses or photographs.
    • The frame of 33 days and 60–65 days is a rough guide from the V1 material, not a norm and not a method of identifying the state of a brood.
    • The page does not judge whether the brood succeeded and does not identify the species or the age of chicks.
    • A real year would need dated photographs, a register of visits, the consent of those holding the data and an expert review. None of these is in the material.
    • The state of external links, the catalogue and versions V1 and V2 is checked by the integrator after deployment.