JACKSON: And one year, when all of the storks take off, Martin is sitting there at his computer watching these dots, these clouds of dots move off in different directions. And he's watching one cloud of dots which is going east, sort of through Eastern Europe and then start to curl around the eastern edge of the Mediterranean to go south into Africa.
MARTIN WIKELSKI: We had a bunch that went to Africa, a bunch ...
JACKSON: And then he sees that one of the dots, one of these storks just sort of peels off.
MARTIN WIKELSKI: Yes. So -- so that actually was Hansie.
ROBERT: Hansie.
JACKSON: Apparently, they name the storks when they tag them. So Martin actually knew specifically which one this was. Anyway, Hansie ...
MARTIN WIKELSKI: He was in an area where no other stork was at the time.
JAD: Oh, so they saw like a little blip of purple peel off?
ROBERT: Yeah.
JACKSON: Yeah, peel off from the group.
MARTIN WIKELSKI: In the southeast of Turkey, close to the Syrian border.
ROBERT: And he drops down into a patch of what seems to be utterly ignorable ground in the Middle East all alone. Like, there’s no other storks there.
JAD: Wow.
ROBERT: And ...
MARTIN WIKELSKI: So we wanted to know why did he choose to, you know, stay -- spend his winter close to the Syrian border in an area where usually no stork winters.
...
ROBERT: And Martin and Uschi are thinking “Well, what happened here? Did he get hurt, badly hurt? Or maybe he made a really stupid decision and is now going to starve to death."
JACKSON: So they figured, we know exactly where he is, let’s go see him.
USCHI MŰLLER: Yeah. I wanted to come along. I wanted to see that, because I'm so interested. And it's also kind of an adventure to follow the bird, to see what he's doing.
MARTIN WIKELSKI: I mean, it's actually an interesting way to have not your local travel office guide you to a place, but animals. They -- they guide you to interesting places.
USCHI MŰLLER: We flew into the Turk -- to Istanbul, rent a car and then try to -- to find the bird.
JACKSON: So they hop in the car, they start driving around. And they have their phones or their laptops or whatever out, and -- and they’re watching this little dot, which tells them basically exactly where Hansie is.
MARTIN WIKELSKI: Down -- down to the closest two meters or so, so ...
ROBERT: Oh, wow!
MARTIN WIKELSKI: But -- but only at a specific time.
JACKSON: Turns out the way this device works is that it sends out its data to a cell tower if it can find one, but only once a day.
...
USCHI MŰLLER: We -- we get -- we got a signal in the -- in the early, early morning. It was dark. And then ...
JACKSON: They get up, start driving around.
USCHI MŰLLER: We tried to find, to -- to come closer to the bird with the antenna, we hold outside of our car. And then the signal was -- became louder and louder.
JACKSON: And eventually, they get to a field where the signal is really strong.
USCHI MŰLLER: And -- and stayed there in the car 'til it -- the daylight comes a little bit more.
JACKSON: And just as the sun was coming up ...
USCHI MŰLLER: We saw him feeding on a -- on a field.
MARTIN WIKELSKI: Yeah, in an old field with a little ditch next to it.
JACKSON: This tall, white bird, all alone, no other storks in sight. And he looked fine.
MARTIN WIKELSKI: He was just walking around, feeding on frogs and snakes and whatnot. So he was having a good time there.
ROBERT: So are you thinking, "Good for you? You've actually discovered a -- a restaurant on the outskirts of town that none of the other storks know about?"
USCHI MŰLLER: Yeah. Yeah.
ROBERT: Frog City or something.
USCHI MŰLLER: [laughs] Frog City!
JAD: So what do you make of the fact that this -- is this just an errant, rogue stork getting lucky? Or is this the beginning of something?
ROBERT: Well maybe just Darwin. It may be that, you know, when you get a population group and they all, on average, do one thing, that nature kind of requires that someone on the edge do something else.
DAVID WILCOVE: There’s probably selection for at least some portion of the progeny to wander farther afield.
ROBERT: So that just in case, there’s a creature around who can handle a new environmental challenge.
MARTIN WIKELSKI: It’s actually probably those -- those innovative individuals that really in the end are really important for that entire species to thrive, but -- because they have -- they explore novel ways to do things.