White storks take increasingly quicker and more direct routes for their migrations as they get older, which suggests they learn by experience to perfect these paths. "We've been able to track these animals and gain detailed information on when and where they go," says Ellen Aikens at the University of Wyoming. "But we wanted to learn more about how migration is refined and developed over the stork's lifetime." White storks (Ciconia ciconia) mostly breed in Europe, but fly to central or southern Africa for the winter. Between 2013 and 2020, Aikens and her colleagues captured 258 juvenile white storks at five breeding sites in Germany and Austria.

Commander Andrew Feustel (FOY-stull) used a robot arm to capture the White Stork. It holds more than 5 tons of supplies, including new batteries for the station's solar power grid. Spacewalking astronauts will help install the batteries in October, later than planned due to launch delays caused by bad weather and rocket issues.

Soaring migrant birds exploit columns of rising air (thermals) to cover large distances with minimal energy. Using social information while locating thermals may benefit such birds, but examining collective movements in wild migrants has been a major challenge for researchers. We investigated the group movements of a flock of 27 naturally migrating juvenile white storks by using high-resolution GPS and accelerometers. Analyzing individual and group movements on multiple scales revealed that a small number of leaders navigated to and explored thermals, whereas followers benefited from their movements. Despite this benefit, followers often left thermals earlier and at lower height, and consequently they had to flap considerably more.