For the past six months, biologists Barbara Steininger and Helena Wehner have spent every day hand-feeding and raising dozens of these endangered chicks. They couldn't pass their fostering duties off on anyone else during that time—the juvenile birds needed to imprint on them and them alone.
In mid-August they climbed onboard a microlight aircraft in Rosegg, Austria, to start their approximately 2,800-kilometer journey, which ended on October 3 at a wintering site in Andalusia, Spain.
At the end, you have to release them in the wintering site and accept that they are now independent and don't need you anymore, says Johannes Fritz, who leads the team reintroducing Northern Bald Ibises to the wild in Europe.
Normally parents would guide their young on their first migration to show them the route. But the birds' knowledge of their flight path has been largely lost due to near extinction in their native habitat.
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