Welcome to Israel, Little Princess

Little Princess is the name of world record stork. Longest tracked stork in history. Today she has entered Israel in her 13th year of migration from Germany up north, through Israel to the warmer south to spend the winter in Sudan.

She has passed over 240,000km in her lifetime.

She's been places. Ten days ago she left a little village in Germany and passed through Poland, Slovakia and Romania. She will return from Sudan through Israel in the Spring (March) on the way back to Germany.

She's not alone when she passes through Israel. Every year 600,000 storks pass through Israel. This is a momentous occasion for bird watchers to view this beautiful bird. They stop in different places on their way down south. Some are regular places with man-made lakes that allow them to fish and fill up. But sometimes, like a couple of years ago, they land right across my parents' home, and I get a frantic phone call from my mother begging me to teach her in half a minute how to operate my dad's camera. I don't know if she did get to take that picture. But I'll always remember the excitement in her voice when they landed in our front yard.

Little Princess is at least 15 years old. She was tagged when she was two years old. A stork lives between 15 and 20 years. Little Princess has over 25 little ones. Her current lover is her third one.

You can read more about Little Princess and her historical tracking record, here and here.

To see where she is every day, you'll need to learn German, but I imagine Prinzesschen is Little Princess.

So welcome, Little Princess, and thank you for bringing more babies to the world. Keep up the good work.