Ernst Schüz

Ernst Paul Theodor Schüz (24 October 1901 – 8 August 1991) was a German ornithologist and a curator at the natural history museum in Stuttgart.

From 1936 he headed the Rossitten observatory and organized coordinated ringing studies on white storks and grey herons.

Schüz pointed out that the recovery rate was less than 1% which meant that more than a 1000 storks would be needed to deliver about 10 leaflets which led the idea to be shelved.

Schüz took young storks from the eastern part of this migratory divide and moved them to the western side and found that they took a southwesterly route and apparently followed the adults.

He however conducted another experiment where the young were released only after all the adults had migrated and found that the eastern storks raised in the west chose an apparently innate southeasterly route.